US president says move will be made on Monday as Iran warns it may step up nuclear activities

Donald Trump has pledged that Iran’s “absolutely broken” economy will face “major” new sanctions on Monday, as Iran countered it would take further steps to increase its nuclear programme unless Europe does more to shield it from US pressure over the coming fortnight.

The US president claimed that Iran wanted to negotiate because of the relentless economic pressure from sanctions. Tehran has so far rejected any talks while sanctions remain, and there was no sign of relief on Sunday. Despite calling off airstrikes that had been planned in reprisal to the downing of a US drone on Thursday, tensions in the Gulf remain high.

On Sunday, one person was reported dead and seven wounded in a suspected drone attack on a Abha airport in southern Saudi Arabia. The Houthi movement in Yemen, which is backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for the second drone attack on the Abha airport in 10 days, and also claimed to have struck the airport in Jizan, on the south-west Saudi coast.

Global markets braced for turmoil as US prepares Iran sanctions Read more

John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, warned Iran not to mistake US prudence for weakness. It was reported that the US carried out a cyber-attack on an organisation linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards suspected of being involved in tracking and attacking tanker traffic and naval deployments in the Gulf. A US official told CNN the US cyber command targeted software that was used to track tankers targeted in attacks in the Gulf of Oman on 13 June.

Iranian cyber spies are also said to have extensively used social media, approaching sailors online while pretending to be young women, to mine intelligence on their ships’ movements.

Bolton was judged to have lost an inter-agency dispute last week when Trump pulled back from missile strikes on three Iranian military sites. Trump said the US air force was “cocked and loaded” when he decided the estimated civilian death toll of a military action would be a disproportionate response to Iran’s downing of the unmanned drone.

Timeline Recent tensions in the Gulf Show Hide Tensions between the US and Iran have soared in 2019, with Washington dispatching warships to the Gulf, and Tehran resuming higher uranium enrichment. The UAE says four commercial ships off its eastern coast 'were subjected to sabotage operations'. Yemen's Houthi rebels launch a drone attack on Saudi Arabia, striking a major oil pipeline and taking it out of service. Saudi Arabia subsequently blames Iran for the attack. A rocket lands near the US embassy in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, without harming anyone. It's not clear who is behind the attack, but after the initial reports, Donald Trump tweets: 'If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!' Saudi Arabia says 26 people were wounded in an attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels on an airport in the kingdom's south-western town of Abha. Two oil tankers near the strategic strait of Hormuz were reportedly attacked in an assault that left one ablaze and adrift. 44 sailors were evacuated from both vessels and the US navy assisted. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say they have shot down what they called a US 'spy' drone they claim was flying in in the country’s airspace. The US military confirm one of its drones has been taken down, but say it was in international airspace. Donald Trump reportedly gives approval for the US military to launch strikes on Iran in retaliation for the loss of the drone, before pulling back at the last minute. The Iranian and US presidents trade insults, with Hassan Rouhani suggesting that Donald Trump suffered from a “mental disorder” and Trump once more threatening Iran with “obliteration”. Iran summons UK ambassador over an incident off Gibraltar as Royal Marines seize a tanker, Grace 1, the UK suspects of carrying oil to Syria. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the body tasked with verifying Iranian compliance with the terms of the nuclear deal, verifies that Tehran has breached the agreed 3.67% limit for enriched uranium. The UK government says three Iranian boats were warned off by the frigate HMS Montrose after Iranian boats 'attempted to impede' a British oil tanker in strait of Hormuz. Tehran denies involvement. In a major escalation, Iran seizes the Stena Impero, a British-flagged tanker, off its coast. Iranian officials later make it clear that the capture was in retaliation for the capture of the Iranian supertanker Grace 1 earlier in July. Despite US attempts in the courts to prevent it, Gibraltar says it will free oil tanker at centre of the Iran row. Iran gives assurances the oil is not destined for Syria, where selling it would breach international sanctions against Britain accuses Iran of breaching those assurances after Tehran acknowledged the oil had been sold, and the reflagged tanker Adrian Darya 1, previously known as Grace 1, had reached its final destination after the ship was photographed off the coast of Syria.

But Bolton, speaking in Jerusalem before a three-way conference between the US, Russia and Israel on the future role of Iran in Syria, insisted the US had not lost its nerve.

He said no one had granted Iran “a hunting licence in the Middle East”. He echoed Trump’s warnings that the US military was “rebuilt, new and ready to go”, and said “biting” new sanctions would be imposed on Monday.

“Iran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons, its threats to exceed the limits set in the failed Iran nuclear deal in the coming days … are not signs of a nation seeking peace,” Bolton said.

However, back in Washington Trump issued one of his frequent reminders that Bolton does not have the final say in US national security matters, but is just one voice among several competing views.

“John Bolton is absolutely a hawk. If it was up to him he’d take on the whole world at one time, OK? But that doesn’t matter because I want both sides,” Trump told NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday. He pointed to the disastrous US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a war Bolton aggressively advocated – as a reason for caution in the Middle East.

However, the president warned that any more hostile acts by Iran could draw a more forceful military response than the one planned and aborted on Thursday.

“So what happened is I said, ‘I’m not going to do it. I’ll save it. If they do something else, it’ll be double’,” Trump told NBC, adding that he would continue to ramp up sanctions.

“We are putting major additional sanctions on Iran on Monday,” Trump tweeted.

In his NBC interview he added: “I think that they want to negotiate. I don’t think they like the position they’re in. Their economy is, is absolutely broken.”

As he has done on almost every occasion he has discussed Iran, Trump offered direct talks with “no preconditions” focused on Iran’s nuclear programme.

He said he told Shinzō Abe, before the Japanese prime minister visited Tehran on 12 June: “Send the following message: you can’t have nuclear weapons. And other than that, we can sit down and make a deal. But you cannot have nuclear weapons.”

Q&A What is the Iran nuclear deal? Show Hide In July 2015, Iran and a six-nation negotiating group reached a landmark agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that ended a 12-year deadlock over Tehran’s nuclear programme. The deal, struck in Vienna after nearly two years of intensive talks, limited the Iranian programme, to reassure the rest of the world that it cannot develop nuclear weapons, in return for sanctions relief.

At its core, the JCPOA is a straightforward bargain: Iran’s acceptance of strict limits on its nuclear programme in return for an escape from the sanctions that grew up around its economy over a decade prior to the accord. Under the deal, Iran unplugged two-thirds of its centrifuges, shipped out 98% of its enriched uranium and filled its plutonium production reactor with concrete. Tehran also accepted extensive monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has verified 10 times since the agreement, and as recently as February, that Tehran has complied with its terms. In return, all nuclear-related sanctions were lifted in January 2016, reconnecting Iran to global markets. The six major powers involved in the nuclear talks with Iran were in a group known as the P5+1: the UN security council’s five permanent members – China, France, Russia, the UK and the US – and Germany. The nuclear deal is also enshrined in a UN security council resolution that incorporated it into international law. The 15 members of the council at the time unanimously endorsed the agreement. On 8 May 2018, US president Donald Trump pulled his country out of the deal. Iran announced its partial withdrawal from the nuclear deal a year later. Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Iran correspondent

On further questioning he added the demand that Tehran should not have a ballistic missile programme, and suggested he wanted a tougher inspection regime.

Iran has said it does not want to acquire nuclear weapons and has agreed not to do so under the non-proliferation treaty. Until now, it has stuck to the limits on its nuclear programme agreed in a 2015 multilateral deal, which Trump withdrew the US from last May and has since tried to destroy.

Faced with a US-imposed oil embargo and a web of other sanctions, Iran has warned in recent months that it will cease to abide by some elements of the 2015 agreement.

It is allowing stocks of low-enriched uranium to build up, and President Hassan Rouhani has warned that if Europe does not do more to shield Iran from US sanctions by a 8 July deadline, it will take the much more significant step of increasing its uranium enrichment levels, bringing it closer to weapons grade.

On Sunday, the head of Tehran’s strategic council on foreign relations suggested Iran could further raise the stakes.

“If Europeans don’t take measures within the 60-day deadline [announced by Iran in May], we will take new steps,” the semi-official news agency ISNA quoted Kamal Kharazi as saying.

Speaking after meeting the British Middle East minister, Andrew Murrison, in Tehran, Kharazi said Europeans should provide capital for the special trading vehicle designed to enable European trade with Iran and circumvent US sanctions. Accusing Europe of failing to deliver on its promises, he said: “One should see whether Europe is making empty promises or taking practical steps in the two weeks that remain until the deadline.”

European solidarity in support of the 2015 nuclear deal and resistance to the drift towards conflict may be affected by the current Conservative Party contest to replace Theresa May as the UK’s prime minister. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary and one of the two contenders for the top job, said the UK could support the US in a conflict with Iran, depending on the circumstances.

“We will stand by the United States as our strongest ally but of course we have to consider any requests for military support on a case-by-case basis,” Hunt said while campaigning in Scotland, according to the Daily Mail. “We want to de-escalate the situation but we are of course extremely worried.”

The UK has its own points of friction with Iran. On his visit to Tehran, Murrison raised the plight of the Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is on hunger strike in a Tehran jail. She is serving a five-year sentence for espionage, a charge she denies.

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, is on a sympathy hunger strike outside the Iranian embassy in London. A stream of well-wishers have been to visit him, including Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson.