Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, says new US sanctions against Iran amounted to a “declaration of war” on all countries and went beyond “an illegal economic war against a single nation”, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.

Baghaei said: “The announcement of new sanctions represents an attempt by the United States to exert extraterritorial sovereignty over all independent UN member states.”

“No government has the right to force foreign banks, enterprises, or airports, each operating under the exclusive jurisdiction of their own sovereignty, to refrain from engaging in legitimate trade with a third country.”

The minister said “such secondary sanctions have no basis in international law” and “violated the fundamental principle of sovereign equality enshrined in Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the UN Charter”.

Baghaei warned that a surrender to “such intimidation would lead to the total erosion of national sovereignty” and serve as “a catastrophic return to blatant, full-scale colonialism”.