- The US says Russia and China are blocking the sanctions committee’s work to protect Iran.
- China, Russia fail to stop discussion in Security Council.
- All members should implement arms embargo on Iran: US envoy.
The US and Western allies clashed with Russia and China on Thursday over Iran’s nuclear intentions, as Washington sought at the United Nations to further justify the war it launched against Iran two weeks ago.
At a meeting of the 15-member UN Security Council this month, which is chaired by the US, Russia and China moved unsuccessfully to block a discussion on a committee set up to monitor and enforce UN sanctions against Iran.
They were defeated 11-2 with two abstentions.
Addressing the council, the US envoy to the UN, Mike Waltz, accused Moscow and Beijing of trying to protect Tehran by blocking the work of the so-called 1737 Committee.
“All member states of the United Nations should implement an arms embargo against Iran, ban the transfer and trade of missile technology and freeze relevant financial assets,” Waltz said.
“The UN provisions to be reinstated are not arbitrary, but instead narrowly targeted at the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear, missile and conventional weapons programs and Iran’s continued support for terrorism,” he said.
Waltz said both China and Russia did not want a functional sanctions committee “because they want to protect their partner, Iran, and continue to maintain defense cooperation, which is now again prohibited.”
Waltz noted that the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency had reiterated last week that Iran was the only state in the world without nuclear weapons that had produced and accumulated uranium enriched up to 60 percent, and had refused to give the IAEA access to that stockpile.
Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya accused the US and its allies of whipping up “hysteria about supposed plans Iran had to get a nuclear weapon”, which were never confirmed by IAEA reports.
“This was done to undertake another military venture against Tehran and to ensure a major escalation of the situation in the Middle East and beyond,” he said.
China’s representative, Fu Cong, called Washington the “instigator” of the Iran nuclear crisis and said it had “resorted to blatant use of force against Iran during the negotiation process, making diplomatic efforts futile.”
Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, told reporters later Thursday that Iran’s nuclear program “has always been purely peaceful” and Tehran would not recognize any attempt to enforce sanctions against it.
US President Donald Trump has used Iran’s nuclear program to justify his war against Iran. He said this month that Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks if the United States had not struck three key nuclear sites in June, a claim that sources have said was not supported by U.S. intelligence assessments.
Britain and France told the Security Council that the reimposition of sanctions on Iran was justified by Tehran’s failure to address concerns about the country’s nuclear program.
France said the IAEA was no longer able to guarantee the peaceful nature of the program and that Tehran’s nuclear stockpile was sufficient for 10 nuclear devices.
