Today, Monday, a US official said that the United States will impose sanctions on more than 24 people and entities who have participated in Iran's nuclear, missile and conventional weapons programs.

This strengthens the UN sanctions on Tehran, which Washington says it has resumed despite the objections of allies and opponents.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Iran may have enough fissile material to build a nuclear bomb by the end of the year, and that it has resumed cooperation in the field of long-range missiles with North Korea, which possesses nuclear weapons.

The new sanctions are consistent with President Donald Trump's attempt to reduce what he calls the regional influence of Iran, and they also come after a week of two agreements brokered by the United States to normalize the relations of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain with Israel, two agreements that Trump hopes will lead to the assembly of a broader coalition against Iran, at a time. The same is attracting the pro-Israel American electorate.

The new sanctions notify European allies, China and Russia that despite their tendency to ignore the US campaign to keep the United Nations sanctions on Iran, companies in their countries will feel the harm of breaching the sanctions.

The official said that a key part of the new US campaign is an executive order targeting entities that sell or buy Iranian conventional weapons, and that the Trump administration will also reveal them today.

The punitive steps that will be taken today are the latest in a series of sanctions that seek to halt the Iranian nuclear program, which Israel - an ally of the United States - considers a threat to its existence.

Abandoning the agreement


President Trump announced his country's withdrawal from the nuclear agreement in May 2018, to reimpose US sanctions that crippled the Iranian economy.

For its part, Iran gradually abandoned the basic restrictions imposed by that agreement, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, including the size of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, as well as the level of purity at which it was allowed to enrich uranium.

The agency said that Iran did not mainly abandon the borders of the 2015 deal until after the United States withdrew from it.

It added that it is still working on enriching uranium to a purity level of only 4.5%, which is much lower than the level of 20% that it had achieved before the conclusion of that agreement, not to mention the level of 90% of purity that is required primarily in the manufacture of weapons and suitable for making an atomic bomb. .

When asked to comment on the impending new US sanctions, and what the US official said;

A spokesman for Iran's mission to the United Nations, Alireza Mirosevy, rejected these statements, describing them as propaganda, and said that they would isolate the United States further.

"The whole world understands that this is part of the upcoming American election campaign. They are ignoring the absurd allegations of the United States at the United Nations today, and this will only lead to further isolation of the United States in the field of international affairs," Mirosevi told Reuters in an email.

The White House declined to comment.