U.N. council defies U.S. on sanctions against Iran

UNITED NATIONS — The president of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s demand to restore all U.N. sanctions on Iran, a move that drew an angry rebuke from the U.S. ambassador, who accused opponents of supporting “terrorists.”

Indonesia’s ambassador to the U.N., Dian Triansyah Djani, made the announcement in response to requests from Russia and China to disclose results of his polling of the views of all 15 council members on the U.S. action.

Djani’s country currently holds the rotating council presidency.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted last Thursday that the United States has the legal right to “snap back” U.N. sanctions, even though President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers that was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.

All the council members, except the Dominican Republic, had informed the council president that the U.S. administration’s action was illegal because Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018.

Djani told members at the end of a virtual meeting on the Mideast on Tuesday that there was no general agreement among council members.

“Having contacted the members and received letters from many member countries, it is clear to me that there is one member which has a particular position on the issues, while there are significant numbers of members who have contesting views,” he said.

“In my view there is no consensus in the council,” Djani said. “Thus, the president is not in the position to take further action.”

That means the U.N.’s most powerful body, at least during Indonesia’s presidency, isn’t going to take up the U.S. demand.

Niger takes over the council presidency in September, and its ambassador also sent a joint letter with South Africa, Tunisia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines calling the U.S. “ineligible” to trigger “snap back” because it’s not a party to the 2018 deal. So it likely will ignore the U.S. demand as well.

The U.S. Mission to the U.N. later issued a statement saying the U.S. “is on firm legal ground to initiate the restoration of sanctions” under the Security Council resolution that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal.

“The fact that some council members expressed disagreement with our legal position in an informal (virtual meeting) does not have any legal effect,” the mission said.

Pompeo came to the United Nations after the Security Council resoundingly rejected a U.S. resolution to indefinitely extend the U.N. arms embargo on Iran, which is set to expire Oct. 18.

U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft on Tuesday repeated Pompeo’s message: “The United States will never allow the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism to freely buy and sell planes, tanks, missiles and other kinds of conventional weapons … (or) to have a nuclear weapon.”