DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Iran vowed to respond if the U.S. House of Representatives' "blatantly hostile" vote to impose new sanctions becomes law.
The U.S. action goes against commitments to carry out the 2015 nuclear accord "in good faith and in a constructive climate" and may ultimately "erode benefits Iran was to derive" from the deal, state-run Iranian Students' News Agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as saying Wednesday.
Iran will "certainly respond" to this "blatantly hostile undertaking" against it, said Araghchi, who was a member of the Iranian team that negotiated the nuclear deal with world powers. He didn't elaborate.
President Hassan Rouhani told his Cabinet that the government would "take any other action needed to preserve and strengthen the interest of the nation," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
The measure passed Tuesday now goes to the U.S. Senate, though the White House has sent mixed signals over whether President Donald Trump will sign it.
The House action escalated tensions between Iran and the U.S., which this month recertified the Islamic Republic's compliance with the nuclear deal even as Trump continued to call it the "worst deal" he has ever seen.
So far the Trump administration has applied additional penalties tied to Iran's ballistic missile program, which is outside the accord. And while onerous sanctions on Iran were lifted in exchange for its curtailment of its nuclear program, many American restrictions exist, scaring away investors.
The House bill would strengthen sanctions on Russia and impose new penalties on Iran and North Korea.
It would target entities deemed to support terrorism, sell weapons to Iran or help its ballistic missile program.
Trump supports sanctions against the three countries but wants to make sure the U.S. gets "good deals," White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday aboard Air Force One.
Iran's parliament has said it will start discussing a bill that would increase funding for the country's missile program and the Revolutionary Guards, which have been a target of earlier sanctions.
Information for this article was contributed by Golnar Motevalli of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 07/27/2017