ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Iran on Friday called on all countries to refrain from implementing or recognizing the effects of newly imposed US sanctions set to target states that trade with Tehran, warning that participation in the measures would amount to complicity in Washington’s “completely illegal and unjustified” actions.

On Monday, the US Treasury Department launched “Operation Economic Outcast,” an economic campaign targeting the Islamic Republic “and its enablers,” and aimed at severing “every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone,” according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Bessent noted that US President Donald Trump was calling world leaders to press them to suspend any facilitation of Iranian exports and currency management services, threatening to end access to the US dollar system to those failing to comply and warning that they would “share in the isolation” of Tehran.

“All countries are obliged to refrain from implementing such sanctions,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement, adding “all governments are also obliged to refrain from recognizing or approving the situations or effects resulting from these illegal actions.”

The ministry claimed that implementing the “unilateral” sanctions amount to “complicity in imposing the illegal will of a state on independent states and disrupting their legitimate economic and trade relations.”

“Regardless of their name and title, the US economic sanctions against Iran are completely illegal and unjustified measures that violate the UN Charter,” it asserting, describing the campaign as equivalent to “US state terrorism against Iran and the world.”

The statement argued that the sanctions violate the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

The campaign was launched at the direction of Trump, who announced the “MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION” against Iran earlier in August, describing the move as economic warfare and warning any country that provides a lifeline to Iran’s economy will also face “TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”

The measures come six months into the US-Iran conflict which began in late February with a series of US-Israeli airstrikes targeting Iran’s leadership and its nuclear and missile programs, prompting retaliatory Iranian strikes across the region, before turning into an economic warfare after Tehran restricted access to the vital Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has shut the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway where roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil is transported as a means in its war against the US and Israel, sharply driving up oil prices. The US in turn has imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports.