WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is preparing to levy new sanctions on Iran, U.S. officials said Thursday, in the first punitive action since the White House put Iran "on notice" after it test-fired a ballistic missile.

Up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies could be penalized as part of the move, expected as early as Friday, said the officials and others with knowledge of the decision. The individuals weren't authorized to discuss the unannounced sanctions publicly and insisted on anonymity.

The sanctions, coming in the first weeks of President Donald Trump's term, reflect his administration's desire to take a strong stance toward Iran from the start. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being insufficiently tough on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

The White House and the State Department declined to comment.

It was unclear exactly which entities would be sanctioned. Many sanctions on Iran that had been imposed in response to its nuclear program were lifted in the final years of the Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal the U.S. and world powers brokered. Some of those penalties could be re-imposed under separate sanctions authorities unrelated to nuclear issues.

That prospect raises the possibility of a fresh confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, which has forcefully argued that it considers any new sanctions a violation of the nuclear deal. The U.S. has maintained that it retains the right to sanction Iran for other behavior such as supporting terrorism.

"This is fully consistent with the Obama administration's commitment to Congress that the nuclear deal does not preclude the use of non-nuclear sanctions," said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates for a hardline U.S. position on Iran.

The impending sanctions come the same week that Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation against Iran for testing a ballistic missile and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis. The U.S. accuses Iran of arming and financing the rebels, who this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemen's internationally recognized government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

"As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice," said Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have encouraged Trump not to let the missile test go unpunished. On Thursday, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee joined more than a dozen other lawmakers to urge Trump to act.

"Iranian leaders must feel sufficient pressure to cease deeply destabilizing activities," the lawmakers wrote.

Iran has reacted angrily to the threats of retaliation. Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, predicted this week that "the U.S. will be the final loser."

"It is not for the first time that a naive person from the U.S. poses threats to Iran," Velayati said, according to Iran's state-run IRNA news agency.

Though Trump has long derided the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, recently he has avoided repeating his campaign pledge to renegotiate it. Iran has insisted the deal won't be re-opened, and the other world powers that negotiated it with the U.S. have little appetite for revising it.

The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, has stated that Iran's ballistic missile testing doesn't violate the nuclear deal itself. But as part of the final negotiations for that deal, Iran agreed to an eight-year extension of a U.N. ban on ballistic missile development.

The U.N. Security Council later endorsed the agreement, calling on Iran not to carry out such tests. But Iran has flouted the prohibition regularly in the past year-and-a-half, drawing sanctions from the U.S. but also diplomatic cover from Russia.

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Associated Press writers Josh Lederman and Julie Pace contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration said on Thursday that Israel's building of new settlements or expansion of existing ones in occupied territories may not be helpful in achieving peace with Palestinians, adopting a more measured tone than its previous pro-Israel announcements.

In a statement issued two weeks before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit U.S. President Donald Trump, the White House said the administration "has not taken an official position on settlement activity."

Trump, a Republican, has signaled he could be more accommodating toward settlement projects than his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. The latest statement reflects slightly more nuanced language on how the new administration views settlement activity.

"While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal," the White House said in a statement.

The statement could disappoint Israel's far-right, which had hoped Trump would give an unqualified green light on rapid settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem - areas Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

In the first Israeli reaction to the statement, Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, said it was too early to tell how it would affect future building.

"It's still too early to tell ... I would not categorize this as a U-turn by the U.S. administration but the issue is clearly on their agenda ... the issue will be discussed when the prime minister (Netanyahu) meets the president in Washington," Danon told Israel Radio.

"We will not always agree on everything," he added.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone with Netanyahu on Thursday, the State Department said. It did not say whether they discussed the White House statement.

Obama routinely criticized settlement construction plans and his administration often described settlement activity as lacking legitimacy and impeding peace.

The White House statement came as Israel has ratcheted up settlement activity. On Wednesday, it said it would establish a new settlement in the occupied West Bank, the first since the late 1990s. It also announced plans for 3,000 more settlement homes in the West Bank, the third such declaration in less than two weeks since Trump took office.

An announcement a week ago by Israel that it would build some 2,500 more dwellings in the West Bank, where Palestinians now seek statehood, drew rebukes from the Palestinians and the European Union.

(Reporting by Washington Newsroom; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Bill Rigby and Peter Cooney)

(Yahoo News)