Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday approved the continuation of international negotiations regarding its controversial nuclear program, at the same time criticizing world powers for not working hard enough to reach a deal, reported The Associated Press.
"On the nuclear issue, the United States and European colonialist countries gathered and applied their entire efforts to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees but they could not and they will not," Khamenei said on his website.
Khamenei's remarks come the day after six world powers and Iran extended the nuclear agreement deadline for the second time this year, and suggest that he will continue to support negotiations.
The six major powers involved in the talks are the U.S., Great Britain, France, China, Germany and Russia - each worried that Iran might be close to developing nuclear weapons.
After word broke of the deadline extension on Monday, several U.S. Republican lawmakers insisted that sanctions should again be increased against Iran, reported Reuters.
"We believe this latest extension of talks should be coupled with increased sanctions and a requirement that any final deal between Iran and the United States be sent to Congress for approval," the three lawmakers, Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, said in a statement.
Another Republican Representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said, "The Obama administration should realize that the Iranians are not serious about these talks and should abandon the negotiations and with the Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, it's time that we roll up our sleeves and get to work to pass new sanctions on the Iranian regime."
The White House responded to the call for increased sanctions by issuing a statement saying it would be "counterproductive" and leave the impression that the U.S. was "more interested in punishing" the country than striking a deal, reported The Hill.
"The concern that we have is that layering on additional sanctions could leave some of our partners with the impression that this sanctions regime is more punitive in nature than anything else, and that could cause some cracks in that international coordination to appear," said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. "And that would therefore undermine the point of the sanctions regime in the first place."
Iran and the major powers have extended the talks until July 2015.
