Iran has made billions of dollars despite sanctions and amid the United States blockade, Supreme National Security Council head Mohsen Rezaee claimed in an interview with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) station on Saturday.
He also stated that Iran had sold millions of barrels of oil, bypassing the US naval blockade.
"In the past month or two, we sold seventy million barrels of oil," he said. "Now every day we sell oil to American ships on that side, as much as we produce."
He also warned that other countries should not join the US "economic war" against Iran, threatening to strike any that participated.
"Of course, we negotiate with him first," he said. "We hold a meeting, we say, 'go and separate your ranks from America,' and if they don't act, we will strike. We will strike the interests of the country."
In addition, Rezaee threatened the US, claiming that Iran had not attacked American bases unprovoked before. Now that the US had declared economic warfare, he explained, Iran would strike "a few oil and economic companies around Iran and elsewhere."
Iran would also attack bases if the US added forces to it, he said.
"They will not make any movements in the southern direction," he added. "We will find out if they have met with the counter-revolutionary groups. We will attack them there."
US, Israel aiming to promote war to sell more weapons, Iran claims
During the interview, Rezaee accused the US and Israel of intentionally fostering the regional conflicts in order to sell weaponry, saying that Iran had no interest in the war.
"If we were warmongers, would we have gone to three negotiations with the Americans?" he defended. "How many ceasefires would we have accepted? Of course, we are not warmongers, but we will not surrender under any circumstances. We will defend our nation wholeheartedly."
The Strait of Hormuz is currently closed, he also claimed, and will reopen only if the US "fulfills its obligations."
Discussing the Mecca defense pact between Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, Rezaee claimed that the Gulf countries had been spurred by the US abandoning them.
"America told them, 'Goodbye, we are leaving.' They want to fill America's void."
Iran would also be evolving its defenses in the wake of the war with Israel and the US, he said, saying that "Iran today will no longer be the Iran it was before the war.
"Of course, the pretentious and arrogant America will not be the America it was before the war," he added.
US President Donald Trump's "stupidity," he said, came in creating a huge debt for Americans and their allies.
"He wanted to make America great again with his election slogan, but what did he make great?" he said. "He made the debts greater. The debt on the 30-year US bond rate has become greater."
In order to finance itself now, Razaee claimed, the US "must borrow at a rate of three and seven tenths of 2020, meaning that for every hundred billion dollars in debt, it must spend three and seven tenths of a billion dollars more annually than in the past. If you multiply this by the thirty-year US bonds in those 40 trillion bonds, perhaps several times our annual budget is imposed on the American people and American companies."
US endangered world by attacking Iran over nuclear weapon, Razaee accuses
The Supreme National Security Council head also addressed the US claims that it had begun the war with Iran in order to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, accusing America that by doing so it had actually put the world in greater danger.
"The United States said it came to prevent the atomic bomb," he explained. "Now the whole world is saying, 'Wow, neither the NPT [Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons] nor membership in the Atomic Energy Organization is effective. And it turned out that this atomic issue is very important. The United States has started a war. Why shouldn't we go after the atomic bomb?'"
Iran, Razaee claimed, had accepted the presence of IAEA inspectors, numerous checks and forms of supervision, and other concessions for its nuclear energy projects.
"Well, now the world says that if Iran, which has been so obedient, is attacked, and its nuclear facilities are attacked, why don't we go and make a bomb so that no one can attack us?"