Threats made by Iran will only further isolate the country, the top US envoy for Iran said on Friday after Tehran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei said its fight could move beyond its borders.
“As long as the regime threatens the world it will become more isolated,” Brian Hook, US Special representative for Iran, told reporters in a briefing.
“Until Iran behaves like a normal nation its isolation will only deepen,” he said.
In his first Friday prayers sermon in eight years, Khamenei told worshippers chanting “Death to America” that the elite Revolutionary Guards could take their fight beyond Iran’s borders after the US killing of top Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani.
President Donald Trump in 2018 pulled the United States out of a nuclear deal between Iran and major powers, arguing the agreement was too weak and that new sanctions would force Iran to accept more stringent terms.
Hostilities escalated this month after Soleimani’s killing in a drone strike in Iraq and Iran retaliated by launching missile strikes at US targets in Iraq.
Earlier, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a senior Iranian general for his role in a brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters as it ramps up its maximum pressure campaign on Tehran.
The State Department said it imposed penalties on Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Hassan Shahvarpour for directing a massacre of nearly 150 demonstrators in southwestern Iran in November.
“General Shahvarpour was in command of units responsible for the violent crackdown and lethal repression around Mahshahr," Hook said.
He said the designation was the result of photographic and video tips submitted to the department by Iranians.
The department has received more than 88,000 such tips since it appealed for Iranians to report evidence of repression and gross human rights abuses, Hook said.
Iran has denied US allegations of widespread repression but has acknowledged confronting separatists in Mahshahr that it said were armed.
