US faces new isolation in UN Security Council

SANAA, Aug.22 (YPA) – The United States faced further isolation on Friday over its bid to reimpose an international embargo on Iran, in which 13 out of the 15 UN Security Council members oppose the US effort on the grounds that it was invalid.

Members of the Security Council stressed that Washington’s proposal was invalid because it had used an agreed process under the nuclear agreement from which it had withdrawn two years earlier.

In the 24 hours following US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement of the 30-day countdown to the return of US sanctions on Iran, including the arms embargo, former allies Britain, France, Germany and Belgium, as well as China, Russia, Vietnam, Niger, St. Vincent, the Grenadines, South Africa, Indonesia, Estonia and Tunisia, wrote letters of objection seen by Reuters.

The United States accuses Iran of violating a 2015 agreement with world powers aimed at preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons in exchange for relief of sanctions , but President Donald Trump called it the “worst deal ever” and withdrew from it in 2018.

Diplomats said Russia, China and many other countries are unlikely to reimpose sanctions on Iran, Pompeo warned Moscow and Beijing on Friday, and threatened US action if they refuse to reimpose UN measures on Iran.

The US draft resolution extending the arms embargo on Iran has failed, with only two votes, one of which was the vote of The United States itself, while Russia and China opposed it and 11 abstained.

The Dominican Republic has not yet written to the Council to clarify its position on support for the imposition of sanctions.

As part of the process that Washington says it has begun, all sanctions will apparently have to be re-imposed  at midnight (0800 GMT) a few days before Trump is scheduled to address world leaders at the UN General Assembly, the annual meeting that will be largely hypothetical because of the Coronavirus epidemic.

E.M