Tehran: While the talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal continue to be at an impasse, Iran imposed sanctions on 61 Americans for backing an Iranian rebel group. The freshly sanctioned individuals include former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Reuters reported.
Others whom Tehran blacklisted include Republican former President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former White House national security adviser John Bolton. The blacklisted individuals had voiced their support for the exiled dissident group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK).
Iran had issued sanctions on Americans in the past too, which let Tehran seize assets they held in the country. Giuliani, along with Pompeo and Bolton, who worked under Trump, had been attending MEK events, which were widely reported.
In January, Iran imposed sanctions on 51 Americans and 24 in April.
The indirect nuclear deal talks between the United States and Iran were revived last November in Vienna, which got continued in Qatar. But talks again got halted to a months-long impasse.
The 2015 deal was abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018, reimposing sanctions on Iran. This made Tehran breach the limits in the 2015 pacts regarding nuclear fuel accumulation.