WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump is set to announce the latest round of sanctions on Iran targeting the Islamic nation's nuclear weapons program on Monday.
'Iran cannot have Nuclear Weapons! Under the terrible Obama plan, they would have been on their way to Nuclear in a short number of years, and existing verification is not acceptable,' Trump said on Twitter.
He said he looks forward to the day that sanctions come off Iran, and they become a productive and prosperous nation again. 'The sooner the better.'
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is in Saudi Arabia for talks on Iran, said Washington's diplomatic isolation and economic pressure campaign against Tehran will intensify until it decides to forgo violence and 'meet our diplomacy with diplomacy.'
The immediate provocation behind additional sanctions is the shooting down of a US drone and oil tanker attacks in Gulf of Oman, both of which the US government blames on Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The New York Times reported that an open war between the United States and Iran was averted after Trump changed his decision at the last minute to order a military attack on the Islamic nation Thursday in retaliation to targeting its drone.
The US is set to deploy 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East.
Earlier, the Washington Post had reported that Iran's computer systems that control rocket and missile launchers were disabled in a US cyber-attack in response to the shooting down of the US drone and attacks on oil tankers.
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