Iran is keeping up a drumbeat of opposition to US demands for sweeping change in its foreign policy and nuclear program.
France, one of several European powers dismayed by the US withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear accord, said Washington's method of adding more sanctions on Tehran would reinforce the country's dominant hardliners.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week threatened Iran with "the strongest sanctions in history" if it did not curb its regional influence, accusing Tehran of supporting armed groups in countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Pompeo was speaking two weeks after President Donald Trump pulled out of an international nuclear deal with Iran that had lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs to its nuclear program. European powers see the accord as the best chance of stopping Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Pompeo had repeated old allegations against Tehran "only with a stronger and more indecent tone".
"Mr Pompeo and other US officials in the current administration are prisoners of their wrong illusions, prisoners of their past and have been taken hostage by corrupt pressure groups," he told state television.
A senior Iranian military official, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, said Iran would not bow to Washington's pressure to limit its military activities.
"This enemy (the United States) does not have the courage for military confrontation and face-to-face war with Iran, but it's trying to put economic and mental pressures on the Iranian nation," state news agency IRNA reported him as saying.
Deputy foreign ministers of the remaining parties to the nuclear accord - Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia - will meet their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Vienna.
The meeting will assess what can be done to keep the deal and circumvent extraterritorial US sanctions that are affecting foreign business appetite for Iran.
