MNA – Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told the New Yorker while in New York on Thu. that Iran would always respond to any act of hostility against its territory and interests.

“We always respond,” the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told the New Yorker correspondent on Thursday, in New York. The lesson, he said, is “don’t play with Iran.”

“We say, ‘You may start a war, but you won’t be the ones who end it,’” Zarif told the New Yorker this week while in the American city for the United Nations Economic and Social Council session.

“We will survive, we will prosper, long after President Trump is gone,” Zarif said, at a second session with a small group of journalists, on Thursday. “Our time slots are in millennia.”

This comes as IRGC said in a statement on Friday that it seized a trespassing British tanker 'Stena Impero' “at the request of Hormozgan Ports and Maritime Organization when passing through the Strait of Hormuz, for failing to respect international maritime rules.” The oil tanker was transferred to the coast to undergo the required legal proceedings, the statement added.

An unnamed Iranian maritime official said the ship had breached international maritime regulations by passing through a prohibited maritime passage in the Strait, turning off its tracking signals and ignoring warnings issued by Iranian authorities.

On July 4, British Royal Marines in Gibraltar stormed the Iran-operated 300,000-tonne Grace 1 and detained it, accusing it of carrying oil to Syria in possible violation of the European Union’s sanctions on the Arab country. Iran condemned the move as “piracy” and has called for the immediate release of the tanker.