Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has told a German magazine that the United States has too many problems in Iraq to become involved in armed conflict with Iran. The United States "is not in a position to get into a new military conflict," Mottaki was quoted as saying in an excerpt of an interview to be published in Focus magazine.
"170,000 American soldiers can guarantee neither their own safety nor the security of Iraq," Iran's top diplomat conveyed.
These comments came as the US government is intensifying financial sanctions against Iran and ratcheting up pressure on Iranian firmss suspected of supporting Tehran's nuclear works.
The US Treasury and other government agencies have blacklisted and applied asset freezes against at least 15 Iranian entities so far this year. "We believe that there is a real potential that these sanctions will have the effect of changing the government of Iran's mind about the defiant policy it is currently pursuing," Stuart Levey, the Treasury's undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, told AFP.
