Tehran Says US Sanctions Are ‘Declaration Of War’ On All Nations, Urges Global Revolt

Tehran has on Saturday further addressed the new Trump-Bessent plan of long-term economic ‘strangulation’ and isolation, which in the US Treasury Secretary’s words seeks to “collapse” the Iranian government with the “toughest sanctions in history.” This of course means that Washington will have to at the same time pressure other nations that do business with Tehran to immediately cease, which could prove a tall order – given already China and Russia are clearly not going to comply.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, said the new sanctions initiative amounts to a “declaration of war” on all countries and goes beyond “an illegal economic war against a single nation.“

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,” he continued, according to Fars news agency.

The ministery added that “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 previewed and 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.“

This is clearly an attempt to put other countries on notice, urging them not to play Washington’s game. The appeal might gain a sympathetic ear especially in BRICS and Global South countries.

The statement was issued on the heels of Iran’s military days ago giving a more direct warning and threat to America’s regional Gulf allies. On Wednesday Ali Abdollahi, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, announced that “any assistance or facilitation provided to the aggressor US military amounts to participation in the US military operation.“

“It seems unlikely that such a large number of military aircraft, particularly refuelling aircraft, could be present at regional bases without knowledge of host countries,” said Abdollahi. 

All of this is a mirror response to Bessent’s Bush-style “you’re either with us or against us” rhetoric.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and top negotiator, has issued some fresh words of his own. He claimed Tehran has received “numerous messages” related to new security and economic arrangements in the region as a result of US-Israeli aggression.

“The United States put the security of every single one of its allies at such risk through bullying and pure disregard for their interests for the sake of Israel that they briefly saw their entire existence on the line,” Ghalibaf stated on X.

“A homegrown, independent order is what will actually deliver peace and security,” he added. Iran has for months said that various countries are seeking to strike their own separate arrangements for vessel passage through the Strait of Hormuz, something which if true gives the Islamic Republic further leverage. But the White House has been seeking to counter this narrative by feeding reports to Axios…

There are essentially two ways to interpret the administration’s claims about the volume of oil now moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

The first is that Washington is significantly overstating the numbers in an effort to calm energy markets, push oil prices down, and… https://t.co/RJKJyER3nt

— Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش (@citrinowicz) August 22, 2026

At the moment, Axios is claiming that millions of barrels of oil are still transiting via a ‘stealth’ corridor ensured by the US Navy, but there are many expressing skepticism over this. The past days have actually seen no new attacks on foreign vessels in the strait, as the plot thickens over competing narratives (given the Iranians have dismissed the Axios reporting as fabrications).