The US special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, has censured the European Union over approving a sum of $20.7 million aid for the Islamic Republic.

The remarks by Brian Hook came on Friday; one day after the EU agreed to pay the sum in development aid to Tehran as the 28-nation bloc steps up efforts to blunt the impact of returning US sanctions against Iran and to keep it in the multilateral 2015 nuclear deal.

Hook said the move sent “the wrong message at the wrong time,” calling on Brussels to help Washington to end what he called the Iranian threat to global stability, a claim Iran totally rejects.

He said that “the United States and the European Union should be working together instead to find lasting solutions that truly support Iran’s people and end the regime’s threats to regional and global stability.”

The EU measure was announced in a statement on Thursday by the bloc's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, who once again reaffirmed Europe's commitment to joint efforts with Iran to keep the nuclear deal alive without the US.

Washington in May went against international calls and unilaterally scrapped the nuclear agreement, announcing that it would re-impose the anti-Iran sanctions that were lifted under the multilateral accord.

Denouncing the White House's hostile move, Iran's other partners to the deal -- France, the UK, Germany, Russia and China -- vowed efforts to protect the agreement, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The first phase of US sanctions target Iran's access to the US dollar, metals trading, coal, industrial software, and auto sector. The second phase , which will return in early November, takes aim at Iran's oil sales and its Central Bank.

Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani, have said that the sanctions target the Iranian nation.

“Today, the United States is isolated in the public opinion of the world, and is even more secluded among the Iranian people because the US sanctions plan is against the Iranian people,” Rouhani said on July 14.

Washington has also launched a campaign of pressure and threats against those European firms that defy US bans and fail to leave the Iranian market.

KD