US Ambassador Nikki Haley addressing the UN Security Council. Photo: Reuters / Mike Segar.

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told Fox News on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s new sanctions on Iran were “suffocating” the Tehran regime and the administration would not permit the Islamic Republic “to have any nuclear programs.”

Speaking with anchor Bret Baier, Haley asserted that Iran was “feeling the pain” from Trump’s sanctions, enacted in August.

“They feel weak and we are suffocating them to the point that they have to address ballistic missiles; they have to address their support on terrorism,” Haley said.

She added that the US was fully behind ongoing anti-regime protests in Iran.

“Our focus right now is on the Iranian people,” she stated. “I mean, they have protested, they have spoken out, they have said they want a better life.”

Nonetheless, she continued, the US was focused on preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear-weapons capability.

“At the end of the day,” she said, “we can’t allow them to have any nuclear programs.”

“This president is what saved us with this policy,” Haley added, referring to the sanctions relief Iran would have received in accordance with former President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement. “Because otherwise, within just a few years, they would have gotten all this money and it would have been lifted anyway.”

Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal and has since enacted sanctions on Iranian industry and trade in precious metals. Further sanctions on oil exports and banking will be in force by November.