Pompeo’s words were "deceitful, untrue and merely in service of appealing to the public opinion," blasted Abbas Mousavi, a senior Iranian diplomat, after Washington imposed sanctions against Iranian petrochemical companies despite an earlier promise of negotiations without preconditions.

On Friday, the US Treasury announced it has imposed a new wave of sanctions against Iranian energy businesses. The move is meant to stifle the revenues of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which Washington declared a terrorist organization earlier in April.

This infuriated Iran's foreign minister, who, as RT reports, exclaimed that this proves that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an empty promise to Tehran less than a week ago, when he said he was ready to start “a conversation with no preconditions."

“Only one week was needed for the US president’s claim that he was ready to negotiate with Iran to be proven hollow.” ... “America’s maximum pressure policy is a failed policy tried numerous times before by the country’s previous presidents. This is a wrong path and the US government can be sure that it will not achieve any of the goals set for this policy,”

He called the sanctions an act of “economic terrorism” and said Tehran will not yield to Washington’s pressure.

“All countries have a responsibility to react against the flagrant violations of the fundamental principles of international law and not to allow the international community’s achievements in multilateralism to be further ruined by the bullying and unilateral actions of the American governing body,” Mousavi said.

Of course, we wonder how many of these words were prompted by John Kerry's guiding hand.