US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted on Wednesday that the United States will enforce new ‘UN’ sanctions on Iran starting next week. “The United States will do what it always does. It will do its share as part of its responsibilities to enable peace, this time in the Middle East,” Pompeo told a joint press conference with his British counterpart Dominic Raab.
Last month Pompeo headed to the United Nations to announce the “snapback” of sanctions under a 2015 Security Council resolution after failing to extend an embargo on conventional arms sales to Iran. The resolution allows any participant in a nuclear accord with Iran negotiated under former President Barack Obama to reimpose sanctions on the Middle-eastern country, which would come into force after a month.
President Donald Trump pulled out of the historic accord with Iran after he came to power, which he has repeatedly denounced, but Pompeo argues that the United States does remain a participant to the accord. In a bid to curb the clerical state’s influence across the Middle-east, President Trump has already invoked harsh unilateral US sanctions on Iran.
But the European allies of the United States say that though they support extending the arms embargo but want to see a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue. They believe diplomatic negotiations to be important in the whole Iranian issue.
With 13 of the Security Council’s 15 members objecting to the US move, the United Nations has clearly said that it cannot proceed with the re-imposition of US sanctions.
Playing down the differences, Dominic Raab said: “We have always welcomed US and indeed any other efforts to broaden it.”
“The means by which we get there, there may be shades of difference but we have handled them… constructively,” he added.
The issue has come to a start less than two months before the US Presidential elections where the incumbent Donald Trump seeks another term against Democrat Joe Biden, a supporter of the Iran nuclear deal of 2015.
–With Inputs from Hindustan Times
