TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that Iran would respond in kind to any breach by the United States of the 2015 nuclear deal after the House of Representatives passed a new sanctions bill.
"If the enemy steps over part of the agreement, we will do the same, and if they step over the entire deal, we will do the same too,” Rouhani said at a cabinet meeting.
The Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign affairs committee said it would hold an extraordinary session on Saturday to discuss its response.
The parliament voted earlier this month to fast-track a bill introduced in June that would increase funds for Iran’s missile program and Revolutionary Guards.
"We must always develop our defense capability and we will strengthen our defensive weapons regardless of the opinion of others,” Rouhani said.
The U.S. House passed a new sanctions bill on Tuesday targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), as well as Russia and North Korea.
Rouhani said, "We will take any step that we deem necessary in line with the interests of our country, and we would continue our path without paying attention to their sanctions and policies.”
Over the past 40 years, he said, the Iranians have been subject to sanctions, pressure and false accusations by American politicians and propaganda apparatus.
"The U.S. is not only hostile to Iran’s Islamic establishment, but also to the Iranian nation’s resistance,” Rouhani said, adding Washington cannot accept the country as a role model for independence in the region.
The president said the U.S. has no other alternative but to pursue peace and respect the Iranian nation’s rights and the Islamic Revolution and the establishment.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the bill was "very clearly a hostile measure” even if it was only "a compilation of previous U.S. sanctions in the non-nuclear fields.”
Araqchi led the negotiating team that reached the deal with world powers in 2015 known as the JCPOA, under which Iran agreed to strict limits on its nuclear program in exchange for an easing of sanctions.
The new sanctions bill "can influence the successful implementation of the JCPOA and reduce Iran’s benefits under the JCPOA,” Araqchi said.
"That’s why it is incompatible with various sections of the JCPOA which the U.S. has committed to implement with good intention and in a constructive atmosphere,” the ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.
The UN and other signatories to the nuclear deal have agreed that Iran has stuck to its commitments, which has been reluctantly accepted by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
"The new U.S. administration has been forced to confirm Iran’s loyalty to the deal twice within the past six months and it has had no other option as the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in various reports has clearly expressed Iran’s compliance with its commitments,” Araqchi said.
Trump on Tuesday threatened Iran with "big, big problems” if Tehran failed to comply with the nuclear agreement.
His remarks came a week after the White House certified to Congress that the Islamic Republic was complying with the agreement.
"If that deal doesn’t conform to what it’s supposed to conform to, it's going to be big, big problems for them. That I can tell you. Believe me," Trump said during a speech in Youngstown, Ohio.
"You would have thought they would have said 'thank you United States. We really love you very much.' Instead, they've become emboldened. That won’t take place much longer," he added.
Meanwhile, the Republican president told The Wall Street Journal that he would be surprised if Iran were in compliance with the nuclear deal when he should re-certify it in three months.
"We’ll talk about the subject in 90 days but I would be surprised if they were in compliance," he told the Journal in an interview.