Iran’s foreign minister raised the prospect Friday of unlimited Iranian atomic fuel enrichment if the final phase of talks with the United States and other big powers on Iran’s disputed nuclear program does not achieve an agreement by a June 30 deadline, with all sanctions dropped.

The foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, also said the Americans had diverged from a framework agreement reached April 2 by publishing what they described as a fact sheet about the framework’s basic provisions. Contrary to that assertion, Zarif said, there would be no phased removal of sanctions to ensure Iranian compliance.

“The United States for their own domestic reasons, and that’s their right and prerogative, produced a fact sheet, which was not exactly what we adopted,” Zarif told Euronews, a France-based broadcaster.

It was his first extensive interview with a Western news organization since the framework agreement was reached in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Iran has been subjected to a litany of economic and financial sanctions over the years - from the UN Security Council, the United States and the European Union - over uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities. The framework agreement would curb those activities and provide guarantees that Iran’s nuclear program was peaceful in exchange for the removal of the sanctions, which have deeply hurt the Iranian economy.

While Iranian officials have always asserted that their program is peaceful - and Zarif did so again in the Euronews interview - the language he used about a possible failure to reach a final agreement was unusually blunt.

“We’ve said from the beginning that we need to choose the path,” he said, speaking in English. “We can have the path of confrontation or we can have the path of cooperation. We cannot have a little bit of each. If we take the path of confrontation, the United States and the United Nations will continue with their sanctions, and Iran will continue with its enrichment program. Without any limitations.”

Zarif’s interview was the second strong public pushback against the United States this week over the remaining challenges to resolving the nuclear dispute. On Wednesday, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, criticised a compromise worked out between the Obama administration and Congress that gave US lawmakers a greater voice on terms of a final deal.

Iran, Rouhani said, was negotiating with a group of six countries - the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany - not just the United States.

Last week Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who has the final word on Iran’s nuclear activities, said any final agreement must end all sanctions on the day that a pact is signed.