Move comes after US said that no country would any longer be exempt from sanctions if it continues to buy Iranian oil.
Iranian legislators on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a bill that labels all US military forces as “terrorist”, a day after Washington ratcheted up pressure on Tehran by announcing that no country would any longer be exempt from US sanctions if it continues to buy Iranian oil.
The bill is a step further from one last week that saw legislators approve labelling just US troops in the Middle East as “terrorist”, which was a response to the US designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a “terrorist group” earlier this month.
US President Donald Trump’s administration re-imposed sanctions on Iran, including on its energy sector, in November last year after pulling out of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
The US designation of the IRGC – the first-ever for an entire division of another government – added another layer of sanctions to the powerful paramilitary force, making it a crime under US jurisdiction to provide the guard with material support.
On Monday, the Trump administration announced it would not be extending sanctions exemptions for countries that import Iranian oil as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign that aims to eliminate Iran’s oil export revenue, which the US says funds destabilising activity throughout
the region and beyond.
