Ayatollah Muhammad Ali Movahedi-Kermani. Photo: The Iran Project.

“Now is the time for retaliation,” a senior Iranian cleric told worshippers in Tehran on Friday, following the US Senate’s unanimous approval of a ten-year extension of the Iran Sanctions Act.

Calling the move a violation of the nuclear deal reached by Iran and six world powers in July 2015, Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi-Kermani — according to the Tehran regime’s semi-official state news agency Fars — warned, “[The Americans] should know that the Islamic Republic of Iran will certainly show serious reaction against it.”

Ali Akbar Salehi — the head of the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran — was quoted by Fars as saying that, if implemented, the extension of the Iran Sanctions Act — which was also passed by the House of Representatives last month and now awaits President Barack Obama’s signature — would “explicitly violate the nuclear deal.”

Iran, Salehi was quoted by the semi-official state news agency Mehr as saying on Friday, “sees no need to make its (subsequent measures) public, but we have made the necessary predictions and are well-prepared to react (against the extension of the Iran Sanctions Act)…Our decisions will for sure be based on tact and sagacity, and not on emotional responses. The key factor here is our national interests and national sovereignty.”

Meanwhile, according to Mehr, several Iranian MPs plan to present a bill on Sunday that would require the Iranian government to resume all nuclear activities if Obama signs the extension of the Iran Sanctions Act.

Also, an Iranian MP unveiled on Friday a legislative proposal to boycott US-made goods, Fars reported.

In an interview with The Algemeiner earlier this week, Behnam Ben Taleblu — senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank in Washington, DC — said top Iranian officials — including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — are currently trying to “blackmail” the US into making further concessions.

Last month, Ilan Berman — vice president of the DC-based American Foreign Policy Council think tank — told The Algemeiner that Iran feared it could be the “big loser” from Donald Trump’s election victory.