Iran yesterday condemned as arbitrary and illegal reported US plans for new sanctions on international companies and individuals over Tehran’s ballistic missile programme. 
“As we have declared to the American government ... Iran’s missile programme has no connection to the (nuclear) agreement,” state television quoted foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari as saying. 
In Washington, sources familiar with the situation said on Wednesday the US government was preparing the sanctions, which the Wall Street Journal said would target about 12 companies and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates for their suspected role in developing Iran’s missile programme. 
“Iran will resolutely respond to any interfering action by America against its defensive programmes,” said Jaber Ansari, rejecting any new sanctions as “arbitrary and illegal”. 
US officials have said the Treasury Department retains a right under July’s landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers, including Washington, to blacklist Iranian entities suspected of involvement in missile development, the Journal said.
The Treasury is also preparing to sanction five Iranian officials at the country’s defence ministry and its subsidiaries for work on the ballistic-missile programme, according to the newspaper. 
The Journal said reasons for the potential sanctions included ties the Treasury is alleging between Iran and North Korea on missile development.  
Diplomats have said it was possible for the sanctions committee to blacklist additional Iranian individuals or entities over the missile launch. But they said Russia and China, which have opposed the sanctions on Iran’s missile programme, might block any such actions. 
Iranian officials have said the supreme leader would view such penalties as violating the nuclear accord. 
A team of UN sanctions monitors said in a confidential report that the medium-range Emad rocket that Iran tested on October 10 was a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, making it a violation of a UN Security Council resolution. 
Ballistic missile tests by Iran are banned under Security Council resolution 1929, which dates from 2010 and remains valid until the July nuclear deal between Iran and world powers goes into effect. 
Once the deal takes effect, Iran will still be “called upon” not to undertake any ballistic missiles work designed to deliver nuclear weapons for a period of up to eight years, according to a Security Council resolution adopted in July right after the nuclear deal. 
Iran says the resolution would only ban missiles “designed” to carry a nuclear warhead, not “capable of”, so it would not affect its military programme as Tehran does not pursues nuclear weapons. Iran has called Emad a “conventional missile”.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards denied that its naval forces had test-fired rockets close to a US aircraft carrier in the strategically important Strait of Hormuz. 
The Guards naval unit is responsible for securing Iranian interests in the Strait, a vital waterway for a large proportion of the world’s oil, regularly patrolling the area and conducting exercises. 
“The Guards’ naval force had no exercise in the past week when the Americans claim that a missile or rocket was fired in the Hormuz Strait area,” said spokesman General Ramezan Sharif. 
A US military official previously said an Iranian vessel had test-fired several rockets near three Western warships including the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier on December 26. 
A French frigate and the USS Bulkeley destroyer were also in the area. 
Though the rockets were not fired towards any warship their proximity to the foreign vessels - and several commercial ships - was “highly provocative”, said the official, who was not authorised to be named. 
Sharif, however, accused the US of lying about the incident - which reportedly occurred after Iranian naval forces announced via radio that the test-firing was to begin. 
“Publishing such lies in the current situation is more a psychological operation,” Sharif said on the Guards’ official website. 
“The security and peace of the Gulf is of serious strategic importance to Iran. The Guards conduct exercises to increase our required preparedness at due times, based on our own schedule.”