Iranian missile boats in the general area of the Strait of Hormuz, Persian Gulf. Photo: Wikipedia.

Tehran has concrete plans in place to respond to any possible breach of the nuclear deal, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman announced on Monday, following the recent unanimous US Senate vote to extend the Iran Sanctions Act for an additional 10 years, the regime-aligned news agency Tasnim reported.

According to the report, at a weekly press conference in the Iranian capital, Bahram Qassemi said that there would be serious consequences to every American violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). “Our reaction in the first stage will be a political and legal move, and if we fail to reach a certain solution to the US breaches, we will press on with our measures in various fields according to a package we have,” he declared, in a veiled reference to possible military steps or speeding up of nuclear activity.

He also went on to call the US to task for behaving as though the JCPOA were a bilateral agreement, as opposed to one that was reached with five other world powers — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Qassemi further echoed threats made by President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday about a harsh response from Iran if the Senate bill were to be implemented, warning outgoing President Barack Obama not to sign it. If Obama does not do so, the federal sanctions imposed on Iran will expire on Dec. 31, less than one month before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has said that he would either cancel or renegotiate what he has called “one of the worst deals made by any country in history.”

Speaking at a nuclear security conference on Monday, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, referred to the bill indirectly, warning Washington to desist from “irrational and provocative” moves.

In an interview with The Algemeiner last week, an expert on the Islamic Republic said top Iranian officials were trying to “blackmail” the US into making further concessions.

As The Algemeiner reported last week, a former senior Israeli official said that Iran has been stepping up the speed at which it is arming its terrorist proxies in the Middle East, due to its fear that when Trump assumes office, its room to maneuver in Syria will be greatly hampered.

This followed months of belligerent statements emanating from Tehran and actions in the form of ballistic-missile testing and boasts of military advancements — the most recent of which was the entry of two Islamic Republic naval warships into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Senate vote was a response to concerns that the United States will not be able to reimpose sanctions in the event that Iran violates the terms of the JCPOA, which many members of Congress consider to be already breached by the Islamic Republic.