Europe must follow demands or deal's off: Iran's supreme leader

Tehran:- Iran's supreme leader has set out conditions for Tehran to stay in its nuclear deal with world powers, including steps by to be taken by European banks to safeguard trade with Tehran after the US withdrawal from the deal.

European powers must continue buying crude oil, protect Iranian oil sales from US pressure and promise to not seek new negotiations on Iran's ballistic missile programme and Middle East activities, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei told a gathering of officials on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal that lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs to its nuclear programme.

European powers see the international accord as the best chance of stopping Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon and have intensified efforts to salvage it.

"European banks should safeguard trade with the Islamic Republic. We do not want to start a fight with these three countries [France, Germany and Britain], but we don't trust them either," Sayed Khamenei said.

"Europe should fully guarantee Iran's oil sales. In case Americans can damage our oil sales ... Europeans should make up for that and buy Iranian oil."

He warned if the Europeans did not meet these demands, Iran would resume its enrichment of uranium, halted under the deal to minimise the risk of Tehran developing the means to build nuclear weapons.

European powers see the accord as the best chance of stopping Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Ayatollah Khamenei said that, over the past two years, the United States "has repeatedly violated" the nuclear deal while the Europeans remained silent. He asked Europe to "make up for that silence" and to "stand up against the US sanctions".

'Theatrical show'

In his first public remarks since US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded Iran make sweeping policy changes, Ayatollah Khamenei expressed disgust at what he suggested was the casual and boastful way the Trump administration abandoned the accord.

"The Islamic Republic cannot deal with a government that easily violates an international treaty, withdraws its signature, and in a theatrical show brags about its withdrawal on television," he said.

Iran leader also fired a new broadside at Washington's rejection of the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement, saying the Islamic Republic could not deal with a country that failed to keep its commitments.

Khamenei did not directly address remarks made by Pompeo on Monday that threatened Iran with "the strongest sanctions in history" if it did not curb its regional influence, accusing Tehran of supporting armed groups in countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

Pompeo on Wednesday told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing the administration intended to work with "as many partners, friends and allies as possible" to stop what he described as all of Tehran's nuclear and non-nuclear threats.

Ayatollah Khamenei referred to what he called "the fundamental, deep and constant enmity" of the United States towards the Islamic Republic and said Iran would definitely defeat the US if Iranian officials fulfill their duty.

"From the beginning of the [victory of the Islamic] Revolution to the present day, the United States has carried out various types of hostilities to undermine the Islamic Republic and has organized various types of political, economic, military and propaganda activities against it," he said.

The United States has always done everything to "overthrow" the Islamic Republic, but it had been, and would be, defeated, he added.

"All of these measures were aimed at 'subversion,' and this word that is repeated is nothing new. All of these plots have failed... the Islamic Republic is moving forward after 40 years with various capabilities... We do not doubt the defeat of the enemy, and anyone who is familiar with Islamic teachings knows this," Supreme leader stressed.

"The current US president will meet the same fate as his predecessors, Bush and the neoconservatives and Reagan, and will vanish from history."

France, one of several European powers dismayed by the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, said Washington's method of piling more sanctions on Tehran would reinforce the country's dominant hardliners who opposed the pact in the first place.

And German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, that Europe remained "very, very united" in supporting the deal because it feared a proliferation of atomic weapons on its doorstep.

War drums beating?

Fears have been raised by pundits in recent days that a military confrontation could play out after the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal and its imposition of new sanctions on Iran.

A senior Iranian military official, Major-General Mohammad Bagheri, said Iran would not bow to Washington's pressure to limit its military activities. The US "does not have the courage for military confrontation and face-to-face war with Iran", he said.

On Tuesday, the US imposed new sanctions against officials of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for allegedly providing ballistic missile-related expertise to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The elite IRGC said in a Wednesday statement: "The American leaders ... have got this message that if they attack Iran, they will encounter a fate similar to that of Saddam Hussein."