Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that the United States will reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran after the sanctions had been lifted in 2015 by Barack Obama as part of a nuclear deal with Tehran.
This is the Obama-promised sanctions “snapback” that was part of the nuclear deal.
Before getting sanctions relief, Iran has to take significant, concrete steps like removing centrifuges and getting rid of its stockpile. If Iran violates the agreement over the next decade, all of the sanctions can snap back into place. We won’t need the support of other members of the U.N. Security Council; America can trigger snapback on our own.
Iran removed centrifuges and replaced them with machines three times more efficient. They shipped off their stockpile of enriched uranium, only to have Russia start sending it back less than three years later.
And Obama lied about a sanctions “snapback.” Pompeo announced the sanctions are snapped back but the rest of the world is refusing to join us.
“The United States expects all UN Member States to fully comply with their obligations to implement these measures,” Pompeo said in a statement. “In addition to the arms embargo, this includes restrictions such as the ban on Iran engaging in enrichment and reprocessing-related activities, the prohibition on ballistic missile testing and development by Iran, and sanctions on the transfer of nuclear- and missile-related technologies to Iran, among others.”
There will be a price to pay for our allies who don’t join us in reimposing sanctions.
Pompeo said that if UN Member States don’t back the sanctions, the U.S. “is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure that Iran does not reap the benefits of UN-prohibited activity.”
“In the coming days, the United States will announce a range of additional measures to strengthen implementation of UN sanctions and hold violators accountable,” Pompeo added.
Following the lifting of sanctions in 2015, Iran signed billions of dollars in business deals with Europeans to increase trade and exploit natural resources. This is the major reason Europeans won’t back our sanctions play with Iran today.
The Iran deal was always more about giving the Europeans a way out of their commitments to back the U.S. if we decided to go to war with Iran over the ayatollahs’ nuclear program than it was about seriously trying to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. Obama got to say he made “history” and the Europeans breathed a sigh of relief and eagerly got in line to sign commercial deals with the Iranians. In retrospect, Iran was mildly inconvenienced in its quest for a bomb — an effort it has restarted in earnest.
Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. Majid Takht Ravanchi said the sanctions were “null and void.”
‘US’ illegal & false ‘deadline’ has come and gone.” Ravanchi wrote on Twitter, warning that the U.S. “swimming against int’l currents will only bring it more isolation.”
A terrorist state working to get the ultimate weapon is receiving tacit support from our allies because joining us would cost them too much.
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