News / Foreign Policy

US tells UN to renew Iran arms embargo in breach of nuclear deal

Wednesday, 29 April 2020 5:23 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 29 April 2020 5:23 PM ]

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a news conference at the State Department on April 29, 2020, in Washington,DC. (Photo by AFP)

The United States claims that it will not allow Iran to purchase conventional arms after UN sanctions expire in October, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says.

"We’re not going to let that happen," Pompeo alleged at a news briefing on Wednesday. "We will work with the UN Security Council to extend that prohibition on those arms sales and then in the event we can't get anyone else to act, the United States is evaluating every possibility about how we might do that.”

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Washington was seeking to claim that the US has not quit the Iran nuclear deal to technically remain a “participant state,” in order to use a mechanism embedded within the accord to make the UN impose arms embargo on Tehran.

This way, the US aims to invoke a “snapback” in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to restore sanctions, lifted after the internationally backed accord was reached during the President Barrack Obama administration, the report added.

US tells UN to renew Iran arms embargo in breach of nuclear deal

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called on the United Nations Security Council to renew its l arms embargo on Iran before it expires in October.

In 2018, the US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, a deal that sought to curb Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. As part of that deal, a UN arms embargo on Iran expires in October.

"The failures of the Iran nuclear deal are legion. One of them is now upon us. ... where China, Russia, and other countries from around the world can all sell significant conventional weapon systems to the Iranians in October," claimed the US war hawk and former CIA chief.

"We are urging our E3 partners to take action. This is within their capacity to do," he added, referring to Britain, France and Germany, each of which has the ability to force the snapback of all UN sanctions.

While raising military tensions in the Middle East, the US is also keeping up its “maximum pressure” on Iran, where authorities maintain that the campaign has failed even though Iranians are battling the coronavirus pandemic under Washington’s illegal and cruel sanctions.

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