Tehran dismissed warnings of aggressive economic sanctions from Washington on Thursday, while an international humanitarian group sharply criticized Israel over its refusal to conduct criminal probes into the deaths of its staff.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected the economic threats issued by U.S. President Donald Trump, characterizing the approach as “failed policies” that would only heighten anger among Iranians and “bring more failures.”
Araghchi argued on social media that the rhetoric was designed to distract from domestic U.S. economic issues, adding that U.S. “economic terrorism threatens the global economy and the national sovereignty of countries around the world.”
His remarks followed declarations from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who warned in a CNBC interview that Iran would confront the “greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world” through secondary sanctions targeting third-party trade partners.
Concurrently, Doctors Without Borders condemned Israel’s decision to close its review without opening criminal investigations into two separate military strikes in Gaza—a November 2023 attack on a convoy and a February 2024 strike on a shelter—that left four of its workers dead. Calling for an independent international inquiry, the relief agency stated that the decision proves “there is no prospect of accountability within the Israeli legal system for the killing of our staff, just as there has been no accountability for Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians.”
Israel maintains that its military operations target Hamas fighters operating in civilian areas, rejecting allegations of genocide and war crimes while attributing civilian casualties to the group’s presence in densely populated zones.