The United States’ most prominent Western allies refuse to fall into step with its push to snap back the United Nations sanctions against Iran.
On Thursday, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany said they could not support the US move, describing the action as incompatible with efforts to support the Iran nuclear deal, Reuters reported.
The trio announced their position in a statement in response to an illegal US push to invoke the mechanism in the nuclear deal that would restore all of the UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic, whose related resolutions was annulled after the agreement was concluded.
The nuclear accord was made between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group of states — the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China plus Germany — in Vienna in July 2015.
The US left the accord, which is officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018. The move, by extension, violated UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorses the JCPOA.
In order to lend a plausible aspect to its ongoing attacks on the JCPOA, including the attempt at the sanctions snapback, Washington has falsely been alleging that it is still “mentioned” as a JCPOA member in Resolution 2231.
Reacting to the Europeans’ put-down, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo still hailed the US’s anti-Iran bid by saying, “No country but the United States has had the courage and conviction to put forward a resolution.”
Delivering the unilateral US approach its next blow was China’s UN mission that reminded that Washington had itself compromised all of its contractual rights under the nuclear deal.
Neither did a letter presented to the world body by Pompeo to trigger the snapback module qualify for the purpose it has been written for, the mission noted in a tweet.
Before Thursday’s snub, Washington was similarly defeated at the Security Council in an earlier attempt to prevent the expiry of an arms embargo against Iran that will expire in October under the JCPOA.
The European statement, however, urged Iran “to reverse all measures inconsistent with its nuclear commitments and return to full compliance without delay.”
Last May, the Islamic Republic began phased-out countermeasures against the US’s withdrawal from the nuclear accord and the refusal of the European partners of the deal to retain their business with Iran for fear of coming under American sanctions.
Tehran’s retaliation, however, has consistently fitted within the JCPOA that allows signatories to take reciprocal measures in the face of non-commitment by the other parties.
The Islamic Republic has, meanwhile, conditioned reversal of its countermeasures to the US’s return to the nuclear agreement, and the European trio’s resumption of their contractual obligations.
Source: Agenceis
