US, Iran keep up hostile rhetoric ahead of new sanctions

By Menna AlaaElDin and Kanishka Singh

CAIRO/WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The ‌United States and Iran ​exchanged defiant messages ​ahead of Monday's scheduled announcement of new U.S. economic sanctions that could impact the Islamic Republic and Tehran's most important trading partners including China.

As the war neared six months old, the two sides were not exchanging fire but also not pursuing peace talks. ‌All the while, oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have virtually halted as Tehran clings to its leverage by ⁠threatening to strike any unauthorized oil tankers that attempt to transit the narrow waterway.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on Monday amid ‌promises to reveal "the toughest sanctions in history" ‌on Iran while also urging China to cooperate with Washington. China buys more than 80% of Iran's shipped oil, according to 2025 data from analytics firm Kpler. Beijing urged diplomacy.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Saturday that the imminent U.S. announcement of new economic sanctions on ​Iran was an "assertion of extraterritorial sovereignty over every independent member state of the United Nations."

"Such secondary sanctions find no foundation in international law," he said in a post on X.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has warned of economic consequences against any country that provides "any type of lifeline to Iran," ⁠said on Friday that Washington was observing "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," Trump said of Iran.

HORMUZ ​TRAFFIC HALTED

While the U.S. has effectively 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.

U.S. ‌Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the U.S. military helped move a seven-day average of 8 million barrels a day of oil through the strait. That's down from more than 20 million per day before the war or about one of ⁠every five barrels consumed worldwide.

U.S. attacks have severely diminished Iran's economy and devastated its navy and air force, but Tehran maintains enough missile and drone capability to impede oil tanker traffic and attack regional rivals.

Trump, meanwhile, has yet to achieve objectives he set at the start of the war such as dismantling Iran's nuclear programme - the state ⁠of which remains uncertain given that U.N. inspectors have been shut out since 2025 - and creating conditions for Iranians to overthrow their clerical rulers.

Thousands have been killed, including 168 ​Iranian school children on the first day of the war. The U.S. has reported more than 750 military personnel wounded and 18 killed.

IRANIAN ECONOMY DAMAGED

The chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, Major General Ali Abdollahi, promised on Friday that Iran would respond to enemy threats militarily with "crushing, punishing and devastating responses.”

Still, President Masoud Pezeshkian called for ‌a diplomatic solution.

"It would be better to end the war today, when we are powerful and have dignity, and the whole world acknowledges our victory and emphasizes that America, contrary to all regulations, attacked our schools, hospitals, and infrastructure ‌and is hated in the world," Pezeshkian said, according to the ISNA news agency.

Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the country's main negotiator in mediated talks with the U.S., acknowledged ⁠the strain on Iran's economy in comments to Iranian and ‌Iraqi businesspeople late on Thursday.

"No matter how much ​military power we have, we won't survive if people are hungry and we don't have financial turnover, economic growth and national production," Qalibaf said, according to official news agency IRNA.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Ismail Shakil; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing ‌by Cynthia Osterman)

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