U.S. slaps sanctions on Iran foreign minister

Iran’s top diplomat won’t be making withdrawals from U.S. banks anytime soon. The U.S. Treasury Department froze all of Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s assets and levied sanctions against him Wednesday for implementing the “reckless agenda of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

What’s the status of the U.S. beef with Iran? Tensions escalated between the United States and Iran last year when President Donald Trump withdrew from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The rising conflict also has threatened the free flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, where one-fifth of all global crude exports passes. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday called the new U.S. sanctions “childish.”