Pompeo Arrives at UN to Deliver Trump’s Demand on Iran Sanctions
Trump said he would call on the UN Security Council to restore all nuclear-related sanctions on Iran.
(Bloomberg) -- Michael Pompeo traveled to the United Nations Thursday to deliver President Donald Trump’s demand that the Security Council restore all international sanctions on Iran.
“Mark it down, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said at a White House news conference on Wednesday. “We paid a fortune for a failed concept, a failed policy that would have made it impossible to have peace in the Middle East.”
Pompeo arrived in New York to notify the head of the Security Council of the U.S. effort to reimpose international sanctions that were eased under the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. It’s an attempt to kill off what’s left of the accord and force Tehran back to the negotiating table.
The action sets the Trump administration on a collision course with other world powers who say the U.S. doesn’t have the authority to invoke the “snapback” provision of the multinational agreement because Trump quit it two years ago.
Diplomats from other nations that participated in the deal have indicated they plan to behave as though the snapback of sanctions wasn’t really triggered and therefore requires no vote on their part.
While many nations are wary of Iran, the U.S. has been almost totally isolated at the UN in its most recent efforts to raise pressure on the Islamic Republic, abandoned by even close allies such as France and the U.K. Building a coalition may be even harder now for Trump, who’s trailing in opinion polls less three months before the presidential election.
In a letter Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on the Security Council and the world community to reject the Trump administration’s move, the semi-official Fars News agency reported. “The United States has no right to try and reinstate sanctions on Iran,” he said.
Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzya, said in a tweet that the U.S. has no “legal right or reason to initiate this thing.” He said “there are provisions” in the nuclear deal that “were not exhausted yet. Of course we will challenge it.”
A U.S. effort last week to extend indefinitely a 13-year-old UN arms embargo on Iran was defeated in historic fashion: 11 members of the Security Council abstained, with just the Dominican Republic joining the U.S. as China and Russia vetoed the measure.
“Because the Trump administration has been so unilateral in its approach to Iran even among its allies, it doesn’t have any support for implementing a multilateral strategy,” said Rodger Shanahan, a research fellow specializing in Middle East security issues at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. “There is a good chance that the Trump administration won’t be around after the November election, so why would the UN and its allies even push for a vote.”
The State Department cited the previous Security Council rebuke in a statement after Trump spoke.
“Secretary Pompeo’s notification to the Council follows its inexcusable failure last week to extend the arms embargo on the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and anti-Semitism,” the department said. It added that the snapback would extend the arms embargo by default.
Trump has long called the agreement the “worst deal ever” and has said he wants a new accord to help foster peace across the Middle East. His administration has used increasingly tough economic and diplomatic pressure to try to convince European allies to quit the 2015 nuclear deal, saying Iran used the revenue it got from eased sanctions to finance conflicts from Syria to Yemen.
European allies supportive of the nuclear deal struggled to find a way around the U.S. restrictions, depriving Iran of investment and causing its currency to plunge.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s government ruled out any talks in response to what it calls “blackmail.” On Thursday, the Islamic Republic unveiled two new missiles, including one named after Qassem Soleimani, the top Iranian general killed in a U.S. drone strike.
Under the “snapback” process outlined in the 2015 nuclear deal, the Security Council has 30 days to vote on a resolution to continue Iran’s sanctions relief, a move the U.S. could then proceed to veto. If such a resolution isn’t adopted, UN sanctions eased in return for constraints on Iran’s nuclear program would theoretically be restored, effectively killing the accord.
The process, as enshrined in a UN resolution, appears straightforward. But every other party to the deal, including China and America’s European allies, argue that snapback was a right given to the deal’s participants, and since the U.S. withdrew, its actions would be invalid.
The U.S. “is not in any position to ask the Security Council to snap back the sanctions,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Thursday in Beijing. He said China “firmly opposes” unilateral sanctions and urged the U.S. to “respect the legitimate rights and interests of all other countries.”
The U.S. has a different legal interpretation, arguing that UN Resolution 2231 lists it as a participant for purposes of snapping back sanctions.
Pompeo vowed to hold countries like Russia and China accountable, if they refused to go along with the U.S. declaration that the nuclear deal was void and, instead, move ahead with sales of advanced weapons to Iran once the arms embargo expires in October.
Debate Since 2015
Supporters of the agreement say it took Iran off a path toward nuclear weapons. But critics said it provided Iran with economic benefits in the short-term without any long-term guarantee the country wouldn’t eventually decide to restart its nuclear program.
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors repeatedly affirmed that the Iranians were abiding by the accord before the U.S. withdrew. As Washington reimposed sanctions, Iran abandoned parts of the agreement, stockpiling enriched uranium beyond agree upon levels, saying it would reverse course if the U.S. returned to the deal.
The dispute between the U.S. and the rest of the permanent members of the Security Council could plunge the body into a crisis with no clear path toward a resolution.
“It will be one of the worst crises to face the UN Security Council in a generation,” said Richard Nephew, who was the lead sanctions expert for the Obama administration team that negotiated the accord. “The council will be hopelessly divided, without any clarity on how to move forward.”
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