Strategic Culture Foundation | August 22, 2020
More than two years ago, in May 2018, the Trump administration unilaterally walked away from the international nuclear accord with Iran signed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. President Trump derided the deal as the “worst ever” and proceeded to re-impose crippling U.S. sanctions on Iran.
This week the United States announced it intends broadening sanctions to those previously imposed by the United Nations. Those UN sanctions were lifted after the nuclear deal was signed in July 2015 and subsequently endorsed by the UN Security Council under Resolution 2231. Washington wants to reimpose the UN sanctions by claiming that Iran is in “non-compliance” of the nuclear accord, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Washington’s claims of Iran’s “non-compliance” are baseless.
The U.S. is asserting that it is entitled to trigger the reimposition of UN sanctions by invoking a “snapback” mechanism incorporated into the JCPOA, which permits signatories to lodge a complaint if they register credible, non-compliance by another party.
Washington’s double-think is astounding. It unilaterally repudiated an international accord, and by doing so was in breach of a UNSC resolution, yet Washington now wants to use this same accord to enforce multilateral sanctions against Iran. The American position is preposterous, yet it is proposing to proceed in absurd mental gymnastics with an apparently straight face. The seeming lack of awareness of its own glaring illogicality is an illustration of the consummate conceit that defines Washington’s policy.
To accuse Iran of “non-compliance” in a treaty that Washington has trashed is the height of hubris. Furthermore, the wielding of extra-territorial sanctions against any nation that defies U.S. sanctions against Iran is tantamount to aggression. Nations that are trying to uphold the JCPOA are threatened with American sanctions under the diktat from Washington to abandon an international treaty.
The Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran is really a policy of “maximum aggression”. The callousness of Washington’s criminality is testified by its refusal to shelve its sanctions against Iran at a time of global pandemic. Appeals from the UN chief Antonio Guterres have been coldly rebuffed.
Washington’s conduct is that of a rogue state which has no shame nor legal semblance. And yet as its maximum aggression policy fails in its objectives to destroy the JCPOA and incite regime change in Iran, Washington is now turning to the multilateral forum of the UN in order to pursue its felonious aims. That’s a measure of the moral torpor that characterizes the regime in Washington.
Nevertheless, one consolation is that the U.S. is finding itself more and more isolated from its irrational and insatiable tyranny.
Last week, a U.S. draft resolution to extend an arms embargo on Iran was dealt a humiliating defeat at the UN Security Council. That embargo is due to expire as a result of the JCPOA which Iran has been in full compliance with, as verified by multiple UN inspections of its nuclear program for solely civilian purposes. Infuriated by the embarrassing snub to its presumed global power, the Trump administration doubled down this week by demanding the re-imposition of UN sanctions as part of a snapback mechanism, a mechanism that the Americans forfeited when their president crashed out of the deal in 2018.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – whose brain size seems to have an inverse relationship to his expanding waist measurement – this week served notice of 30 days on the international community for the reimposition of UN sanctions on Iran. It is unfathomable how the U.S. intends to proceed with such a process given its void of legal competence from no longer being a participant in the JCPOA. In double-think wonderland fashion, the U.S. somehow maintains that it still is a participant.
In any case, the American posturing this week was roundly rejected by all signatories to the JCPOA, including significantly Washington’s allies among the so-called E3 of Britain, France and Germany.
Russia and China denounced the U.S. proposal as “illegitimate”. Moscow lambasted Washington’s “reckless actions” and noted that the U.S. side has been “blatantly violating UNSC Resolution 2231 since May 2018” with “its policy course aimed at destroying the JCPOA.”
Unabashed, the intemperate and pugnacious Pompeo lashed out at European allies for “siding with the ayatollahs” and warned Russia and China of more sanctions, accusing them of “disinformation”.
The fiasco over the nuclear deal and Washington’s arrant delinquency is but one facet of a much bigger picture. Namely, the flagrant disregard for international laws and norms by the United States which views itself as “exceptional” and above the law, unlike all other nations. There has always been a distinctive element of double-think and hypocrisy in the historic conduct of the United States, especially when it comes to its presumed right to wage genocidal wars and subversions against other nations with impunity.
However, what the fiasco over U.S. demands for sanctions on Iran shows is the extreme culmination of its arrogance and increasingly the isolation that inevitably goes with such deviancy. Washington’s rampant and deranged arrogance is now rightly seen as a global danger to peace and security.