TEHRAN, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) — Iran’s Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani said Monday that United Nations cannot impose sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“We believe that the United Nations and other international organizations cannot impose sanctions on the central bank,” Bahmani said referring to the U.S. attempts to push the UN for a new round of sanctions against Iran over alleged assassination plot on a Saudi Arabian envoy.

Bahmani said Iran’s Central Bank is an independent institution and imposing sanctions against it would be “illegal”, adding that “we believe that the United Nations will not impose sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. authorities said that two men, Manssor Arbabsayar, a 56-year-old U.S. citizen holding both Iranian and U.S. passports, and Gholam Shakuri, an Iranian citizen, were charged with sponsoring and promoting terrorist activities abroad, including a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that the United States will consult with its partners on how to send a strong message to Iran in response to the alleged assassination attempts on the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

The high-profile accusations have brought fresh tensions to relations between the two arch-foes, with Iran fiercely denying such charges.