We paid attention to the another series of sanctions against Iran approved by the United States Congress, which was put into effect by the President of the USA on 11 August this year. The point of this issue is applying new restrictive measures not only against Iran, but also against foreign companies and persons that cooperate with it, including partnership in the sphere of hydrocarbon mining and transportation, petrochemistry, financial and insurance sector. The threats of arresting the property of such "violators" located in USA and freezing their accounts in American banks are once again set into motion.

In this connection we emphasize that Russia is strictly following the restrictions on interaction with Iran that were set by the UN Security Council. However, we do not recognize the numerous sanctions that Washington unauthorizedly introduces under the veil of concern about Iranian nuclear programme and that severely contradict to the international law. We consider the attempts of extraterritorial spreading of the internal American legislation to the entire world to be completely unacceptable and inadmissible. We reject the methods of blatant blackmail, which the USA apply against the companies and banks of other countries.

As we have already mentioned for many times, the continuous increase of pressure on Tehran and delivery of ultimatums not only cripples the chances for settlement of the situation around the nuclear programme of Iran, but also compromises the process of negotiations. Unilateral sanctions considerably threaten the unity of the "sextet" of international mediators that are dealing with this problem. Washington should also realise that if Russian economic operators that interact with partners from the Islamic Republic of Iran in strict compliance with the requirements of our legislation and resolutions of the UN Security Council suffer from the American restrictions, it will seriously affect our bilateral relations.