image Photo: Reuters

US enacts UN sanctions on Iran

The United States announced that sanctions are being reimposed on Iran pursuant to the snapback process under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231.

The passing of the 30-day requirement since Washington’s 20 August notification to the UNSC about Iran’s significant non-performance of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal effectively triggered reenactment of previously terminated UN sanctions against the Ayatollah regime.

China and Russia were among several countries that expressed outrage over the American move, which included a warning from the U.S. State Department that, “if UN Member States fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure that Iran does not reap the benefits of UN-prohibited activity.”

In related developments, U.S. Secretary of State Mike revealed that the Iranian threat was the primary motivation behind the Trump Administration’s initiative to secure peace between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. During an address at the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, Pompeo said, that after President Donald Trump “first laid out his vision for peace in the Middle East, we then recognized that, in the end, the problem wasn’t the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis that was driving so much of the harm. It was the threat from Iran. And when we made that shift, that we said we’re going to defend and we’re going to work with the people of Israel, we’re going to build our coalitions that respect and honor them and recognize their right to exist, that was the thing that unlocked the key that gave us this incredible opportunity. And now truly remarkable leaders of multiple faiths have said we recognize Israel’s right to exist; it is indeed the Jewish homeland, but we’re going to partner with them. We’re going to work with them.”

The American top diplomat went on to tell the congregation that “the Islamic Republic of Iran has a theocratic regime that wants to create instability, that we pray for the Iranian people. We pray for the Iranian people that they will get a government that they deserve — that respects the dignity, the lives of the Iranian people. You saw what they did to this wrestler who had done nothing more than exercise his basic freedom to speak. We pray that that nation will come along and come to see the light. And that indeed we will have a Middle East with less risk, less loss of life that has its faith at the core of who they are and a much more stable place to decrease the risk not only to the people of Israel, but to the Palestinians, and to all of the world.”