Al-Abadi said at a news conference “as a matter of principle we are against sanctions in the region.

Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki also condemned the sanctions, calling them an attempt to create sedition. He called on the Iraqi government to ignore the new measures.

“At a time when the nations of our region and the world await getting rid of the consequences of unipolarism, what came out of American sanctions on the neighboring Iran constitutes a loud violation of international law,” Maliki said in a statement, also published on Wednesday.

He rejects “unilateral sanctions”, calling on regional and international countries to reject methods of “siege, boycott, and forcing”. Such sanctions had no legitimacy as they have been imposed outside the framework of the UN, he said.

The Dawa Party denounced and rejected the unjust sanctions imposed by the US President Donald Trump on the Islamic Republic in Iran in a statement on Wednesday.

The party called on “all free government of the world, and especially Islamic countries” to speak out against the sanctions that “contradict the simplest principles of human rights”.

Ammar al-Hakim, leader of the Iraqi National Wisdom Movement, reacted to U.S. sanctions move on the Islamic Republic of Iran, calling for all-out efforts to help Iran in the face of U.S. pressure.

For his part, Iranian Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri said that "the Iranians have an opportunity to cross from the dangerous conditions in which the country is going through."

Tuesday’s sanctions target Iran’s purchases of US dollars, metals trading, coal, industrial software and the auto sector.