The US must “altogether and effectively” lift the “illegal” sanctions it imposed against Iran after leaving the 2015 nuclear deal, the Foreign Ministry in Tehran said.

“The US must in the first place accept, as the culprit in the current situation, to come back from the path that it has engaged in,” Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said at a press briefing on Monday. Currently, the US is not a member of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and it cannot attribute its own statements to actual JCPOA members or make demands from Iran as a JCPOA member, Khatibzadeh added.