Iran's nuclear programme could restart ‘in hours’ if US impose new sanctions

'The US has shown that it is neither a good partner nor a trustable negotiator', Hassan Rouhani says in remarks expected to further fray relations between Washington and Tehran

'In an hour and a day, Iran could return to a more advanced (nuclear) level than at the beginning of the negotiations' tha preceded the 2015 nuclear deal, President Rouhani said (AFP/Getty Images)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has warned the West that his country’s abandoned nuclear programme could be restarted ‘within hours’ if the US imposes new sanctions.

If US President Donald Trump’s recent “threats and sanctions” continue, he told parliament on Tuesday, the defunct nuclear problem, halted in return for sanctions relief in an international deal in 2015, could be resuscitated and quickly reach more advanced levels than before.

“In an hour and a day, Iran could return to a more advanced (nuclear) level than at the beginning of the negotiations” that preceded the 2015 deal, he said without elaborating.

The comments come just a day after Tehran voted to shore up its ballistic missile programme and the international reach of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard with extra spending.

Both the new bill and Mr Rouhani’s comments are widely viewed as a direct retaliation to new ballistics-related sanctions slapped on Iran by the Trump administration earlier this month and are expected to further fray the two countries’ already strained relations.

The US also maintains a separate terror and human rights abuses sanctions list of individuals and organisations such as the Revolutionary Guard.

“The US has shown that it is neither a good partner nor a trustable negotiator,” added the moderate politician, who won a second term in June.

“Those who are trying to go back to the language of threats and sanctions are prisoners of their past hallucinations. They deprive themselves of the advantages of peace.”

While the US has admitted Iran is complying on the terms of the historic 2015 nuclear deal made with world powers, the White House has insisted that Tehran will face consequences for recent ballistic missile tests, which it says breach the ‘spirit’ of the agreement reached under Barack Obama.

The wording of the UN resolution which endorsed the nuclear deal called upon Iran not to “undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology”.

Relations between Tehran and Washington have soured quickly since Mr Trump took office in January.

The new US president immediately set about imposing new financial penalties on individuals related to terror-related offences, and imposed a travel ban for citizens of Iran and six other Muslim countries, which has since become the subject of intense legal battles.

Iran, in return, temporarily banned US citizens from travelling to the country, and conducted a ballistic missiles test in January, and another in July.

In his speech on Tuesday, Mr Rouhani did not offer evidence of Iran’s current nuclear capabilities, and tempered his own threat by adding that Iran wishes to abide by the terms of the 2015 deal, which opened a “path of cooperation and confidence-building” with the world.

On the campaign trail, Mr Trump proposed scrapping the nuclear deal altogether, a move widely criticised for endangering an agreement which former Secretary of State John Kerry said “made the world a safer place.”

The president is yet to communicate his administration’s broader Iran policy.