Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei slams Trump’s latest threat as a return to ‘full-scale classic colonialism’.
Published On 22 Aug 2026
Iran has decried impending United States sanctions as a “complete erosion of sovereignty” following US President Donald Trump’s threat to punish any country doing business with Tehran.
In a post on X on Saturday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the US announcement was “an assertion of extraterritorial sovereignty” against the United Nations’ member states.
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No state can compel foreign banks, enterprises or airports to renounce commerce with Iran, he said.
“The end result would be the complete erosion of sovereignty as the foundational basis of the UN-based inter-State system, and a recipe for an abysmal return to full-scale classic colonialism,” Baghaei said.
Trump announced on Wednesday the “most crushing economic operation” yet against Iran and said any country whose institutions interface with Tehran would face “tremendous economic consequences”.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doubled down on the president’s words on Thursday, saying the new sanctions regime would “collapse” Iran and that other countries are “either with us or against us”.
Iranian state media was quick to point out that Tehran has faced US sanctions for decades. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the new measures were “bound to fail”.
“We have seen this movie before,” Araghchi wrote on X, alongside a screenshot of a tweet from former President Barack Obama referencing earlier sanctions in 2012. “Same bull. Different bullies.”
The latest rhetorical back-and-forth comes as peace talks with Tehran have sputtered out. The US Navy has maintained its blockade against Iran’s ports, while oil shipment traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has virtually ceased.
Trump told reporters Friday that his government is “seeing what happens” in the conflict.
“They would love to make a deal, but they’re not ready to make the right deal in my opinion,” the president said.
While the US has blockaded Iranian vessels in their ports, the Strait of Hormuz remained bottled up with thousands of seafarers stranded on hundreds of vessels.
Only four commodity ships sailed along the strait on Thursday, none of them large crude carriers or liquefied natural gas tankers, ship-tracking data showed.
However, Iran has granted permission for several Iraqi oil tankers to pass through the strait following repeated requests from Baghdad, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday.
IRNA said obtaining special permission for Iraqi tankers was one of Baghdad’s main requests during Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s visit to Iraq.