Iran's Khamenei says world opposes Trump's 'every decision'

Iran's top leader said on Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trump's policies face opposition acrossthe world as Washington preparesto reimpose sanctions on Iran'svital oil-exporting and financial sectors, state televisionreported.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also said Iran's arch-adversary theUnited States had failed to reassert its domination over Iransince the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled theU.S.-backed Shah.

"The world opposes every decision made by Trump," Iranianstate television quoted Khamenei as saying during a meeting withthousands of students.

"America's goal has been to re-establish the domination ithad (before 1979) but it has failed. America has been defeatedby the Islamic Republic over the past 40 years."

Sanctions to be restoredMonday

Washington will on Monday reintroduce far-reachingsanctions on Iran's vital oil sales and banking sectors to tryto force the Islamic Republic into negotiations to scrap itsnuclear energy and ballistic missile programs and end itssupport for proxies in conflicts across the Middle East.

However, the Trump administration said on Friday that eightimporting countries would temporarily be allowed to keep buyingIranian oil when sanctions come back into effect. Iran is theworld's No. 3 oil exporter.

Turkey said on Saturday that Ankara had received initialindications from Washington that it would be granted a waiver,but is awaiting clarification on Monday.

Most international sanctions on Iran were lifted in early2016 under a deal Iran signed with world powers the year beforeunder which it curbed its uranium enrichment program, widely
seen abroad as a disguised effort to develop an atomic bomb.

EU efforts to save Iran deal

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif spoke bytelephone with the European Union's foreign policy chief,Federica Mogherini, and his counterparts from Germany, Swedenand Denmark about European measures to counter the U.S.sanctions, the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported.

"Mogherini and the European ministers ... highlighted theimportance of the finance ministers' commitment to Europe'sfinancial mechanism to save the Iran nuclear deal and said the
mechanism will be operational in the coming days," IRNA said.

Diplomats told Reuters last week that the new EU mechanismto facilitate payments for Iranian exports should be legally inplace by Nov. 4, when the next phase of U.S. sanctions hit, butwill not be operational until early next year.

The EU, France, Germany and Britain all co-signatories,along with Russia and China, to the nuclear deal with Iran said in a joint statement on Friday they regretted Trump's
decision to restore sanctions on Iran.

With the sanctions clampdown, Trump is seeking to push Iranto end uranium enrichment outright, and halt its ballisticmissile development and support for proxy forces in Yemen,Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East.

"Iran ... will not permit the Trump regime, which has madeAmerican foreign policy devoid of any principles, to reach itsillegitimate goals," the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a
statement carried by IRNA.

Trump denounced the nuclear deal, approved by hispredecessor Barack Obama, as flawed in Iran's favour andwithdrew Washington from the pact in May.