"Their efforts will end nowhere. We are able to export as much oil as we need and wish," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said two days after the United States announced that sanctions waivers granted to eight countries on the list of Iran's crude customers will not be extended.

"They need to understand that this hostility [will] not go unanswered," Khamenei warned, adding, "The Iranian nation will never remain silent in the face of their enmity." In his April 24 address on the occasion of Iran's Labor Week, Khamenei also suggested that the oil ban was a blessing in disguise, as it serves Iran's good by making its economy "less dependent upon crude sales."

In yet a harsher tone, moderate President Hassan Rouhani voiced equal defiance during a Cabinet meeting in Tehran the same day. While admitting that the US pressure may "cause problems in [Iranians'] everyday lives," Rouhani underlined the importance of "people's resistance" as the only way out. The Iranian president, who has been pursuing a policy of open engagement with the West, expressed disappointment at the current US administration's approach toward Tehran. "Talks with a knife-wielder who claims to favor negotiations but uses force and lies will bear no fruit," Rouhani asserted, adding, "We will not hold talks on the basis of a knife-wielder's attitude. Accepting such negotiations is tantamount to humiliation and surrender."

Still, the Iranian president did not fully rule out rapprochement with the arch-foe on the condition that "they [Americans] express apologies for their illegal moves, observe mutual respect and … express willingness to resolve differences based on logic and reasoning."