Brian Hook: Iran’s threats will isolate it more

US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said
on Friday that the more Iran threatens the world, the more isolated it will
become.
“As long as the regime threatens the world it will
become more isolated,” Hook said in response to Khamenei’s speech earlier on
Friday . “Until Iran behaves like a normal nation its isolation will only
deepen.”
In his first Friday prayers sermon in eight years,
Khamenei told worshippers chanting “Death to America” that the elite
Revolutionary Guards could take their fight beyond Iran’s borders after the US
killing of a top Iranian commander.
President Donald Trump in 2018 pulled the United
States out of a nuclear deal between Iran and major powers, arguing the
agreement was too weak and that new sanctions would force Iran to accept more
stringent terms.
Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles
against US military and coalition forces in Iraq on January 8 in response to
the US-ordered drone strike that killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in
Baghdad on January 3.
During a briefing with Reporters in Washington, Hook
said the US administration sanctioned a Revolutionary Guards brigadier general
in the latest action against the Islamic Republic.
Hook said the State Department imposed penalties on
Iranian General Hassan Shahvarpour for directing a massacre of nearly 150
demonstrators in southwestern Iran in November.
“General Shahvarpour was in command of units
responsible for the violent crackdown and lethal repression around Mahshahr,”
Hook said. He said the designation was the result of photographic and video
tips submitted to the department by Iranians.
The department has received more than 88,000 such
tips since it appealed for Iranians to report evidence of repression and gross
human rights abuses, Hook said.
Iran has denied US allegations of widespread
repression but has acknowledged confronting separatists in Mahshahr that it
said were armed.
Responding to Al Arabiya’s Washington correspondent,
Hook welcomed the UK’s move to designate the entire Lebanese Hezbollah
organization as a terrorist group.