FM Zarif: US effort to snap back Iran sanctions discredits UN Security Council

Iran’s foreign minister says an effort launched by the United States to restore UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic on the strength of the so-called “snapback” mechanism under a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers will undermine international mechanisms and discredit the UN Security Council.

Zarif made the remarks in a phone call with Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres on Thursday during which the latter presented a report on the world body’s efforts to put an end to the devastating Saudi war in Yemen.

The top Iranian diplomat used the opportunity to point to an illegal underway push by the United States to invoke a “snapback” mechanism in the nuclear deal that 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.

Although by leaving the JCPOA the United States forfeited all of its rights under the nuclear deal, it launched a bid earlier this year to prevent expiry of an arms embargo against Iran that will expire in October under the accord.

A US-devised resolution to prolong the embargo was, nevertheless, recently defeated at the Security Council, prompting Washington to threaten to try and trigger the JCPOA mechanism that would restore all of the UNSC sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Tehran has warned Washington that it would again be snubbed at the world body if it sought recourse to the mechanism.

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Zarif reiterated during the conversation with Guterres that based on consensus among all of the JCPOA’s remaining signatories, the Security Council members and international legal experts, Washington was no longer a JCPOA member and its intention to trigger the mechanism was not supported at all by either the nuclear deal or Resolution 2231.

“The push carries dangerous repercussions for the international law and will have no result, but undermining of [standing] international mechanisms and discrediting the Security Council,” the foreign minister said.

The Islamic Republic, he said, expects the secretary general and the UNSC members to act on their “legal duties to confront the US administration’s intransigence.”

Guterres, meanwhile, offered a report on the UN’s latest efforts to bring about an end to the now-five-year-old Saudi Arabia-led and US-backed war on Yemen.

He asked the Islamic Republic for help in resolving some environmental complications that have come about in the western Yemeni port city of al-Hudaydah that has been experiencing an all-out siege by the Saudi-led coalition since the beginning of the war.

Zarif assured the UN chief of Iran’s readiness to offer its “good offices” in that regard.

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