Iran says new US sanctions show talk offers hollow, block diplomacy

Iran vehemently responded Tuesday to new US sanctions against its leaders, saying they showed Washington was "lying" about an offer of talks and marked the end of diplomacy with the Trump administration, amid an escalating regional standoff.

Washington blacklisted Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top military chiefs on Monday, saying it would also sanction Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif later in the week.

"At the same time as you call for negotiations you seek to sanction the foreign minister? It's obvious that you're lying," Rouhani said in a meeting with ministers, broadcast live on TV.

His comments came as US National Security Advisor John Bolton, on a visit to Iran's arch-enemy Israel, said Washington had "held the door open to real negotiations" but that "in response, Iran's silence has been deafening".

Iran and the US broke off diplomatic relations in 1980 over the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran following Iran's Islamic revolution.

Tensions between them have been escalating since US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew last year from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic republic.

Trump has since moved to choke Iran's economy, blacklisted Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a "terrorist organisation" and nearly launched a military strike in retaliation to Iran downing a US spy drone.

Zarif said the drone had violated Iranian airspace, a claim the US denies.

But Russia, a key ally of Tehran, on Tuesday backed Zarif's version of events.

Washington has also blamed Iran for mid-June attacks on two tankers in sensitive Gulf waters, a claim Iran hotly refutes.

Trump has said he is ready to negotiate with Iran "with no preconditions" and that Iran could have a "phenomenal future".

"We do not ask for conflict," he said, adding that depending on Iran's response, sanctions could end tomorrow or "years from now."
But Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Tuesday that the new sanctions meant "permanent closure of the path to diplomacy with Trump's desperate government."