The UN Security Council voted 9 to 4 today against draft resolution that would have prevented the re-imposition of UN sanctions on Iran under UNSC resolution 2231, the resolution that ratified the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and six countries, including the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K., France and Germany, that it negotiated with. The agreement lifted UN economic sanctions imposed earlier in return for Iran accepting a very strict inspection regime and limitations on its nuclear program. In 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and imposed “maximum pressure sanctions” on Iran, even though by all accounts, Iran was in full compliance with the agreement. In response, Iran’s parliament passed a measure requiring the government to take “strategic action” to assert its rights under the JCPOA and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which lead to claims by the U.S. and the European signers of the JCPOA that Iran was no longer in compliance with the JCPOA. These claims are being used as “justification” for the “snap back” of UN sanctions which will now occur on Sept. 28, unless a deal is made before then.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the International Organizations, warned that the snap back of UN sanctions would nullify all recent efforts by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran to resume cooperation following the June U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. “In recent years, we have seen military attacks on nuclear facilities become the new norm. Russia experienced this during the Ukrainian conflict; since March 2022, the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant has been regularly targeted by drones and sometimes artillery from the Ukrainian armed forces,” Ulyanov said, reported IRNA.
