- The United States says Russia and China are blocking the sanctions committee’s work to protect Iran.
- China and Russia fail to stop discussions at the Security Council.
- All members should implement arms embargo on Iran: US envoy.
The United States and its Western allies clashed Thursday with Russia and China over Iran’s nuclear intentions, as Washington sought further justification at the United Nations for the war launched against Iran two weeks ago.
At a meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council this month chaired by the United States, Russia and China tried unsuccessfully to block discussion of a committee created to oversee and enforce U.N. sanctions against Iran.
They were rejected by 11 to 2, with two abstentions.
Addressing the Council, US envoy to the United Nations Mike Waltz accused Moscow and Beijing of seeking to protect Tehran by blocking the work of the so-called 1737 Committee.
“All United Nations member states should implement an arms embargo against Iran, prohibit the transfer and trade of missile technology, and freeze relevant financial assets,” Waltz said.
“The UN provisions that will be reimposed are not arbitrary, but rather narrow in scope to address the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear, missile and conventional weapons programs and Iran’s continued support for terrorism,” he said.
Waltz said China and Russia do not want a functioning sanctions committee “because they want to protect their partner, Iran, and continue to maintain defense cooperation that is now prohibited again.”
Waltz noted that last week the UN International Atomic Energy Agency reiterated that Iran was the world’s only non-nuclear weapon state to have produced and accumulated uranium enriched up to 60 percent, and refused to allow the IAEA access to this stockpile.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya accused the United States and its allies of stoking “hysteria around Iran’s alleged plans to acquire nuclear weapons,” which have never been corroborated by IAEA reports.
“This was done in order to undertake a new military adventure against Tehran and ensure a great escalation of the situation in the Middle East and beyond,” he said.
China’s representative Fu Cong called Washington the “instigator” of the Iranian nuclear crisis and said it had “resorted to blatant use of force against Iran during the negotiation process, which made diplomatic efforts futile.”
Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, told reporters on Thursday that Iran’s nuclear program “has always been exclusively peaceful” and that Tehran would not recognize any attempt to impose 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 possessed nuclear weapons within two weeks if the United States had not struck three key nuclear sites in June, a claim that sources 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 its 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.
