Biden Administration to withdraw Trump’s restoration of UN sanctions on Iran

Listen to this article

On Thursday, the Biden administration rescinded former president Donald Trump’s restoration of UN sanctions on Iran an announcement that could help Washington move toward rejoining the 2015 nuclear agreement aimed at reining in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Acting US Ambassador Richard Mills sent a letter to the UN Security Council on behalf of President Joe Biden saying the United States “hereby withdraws” three letters from the Trump administration culminating in its 19^th September announcement that the United States had re-imposed UN sanctions on Tehran. Mills said in the letter that sanctions measures terminated in the 2015 council resolution endorsing the nuclear deal with 6 major powers, but restored by Trump in September, “remain terminated”.

Point to be noted that former President Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement in 2018, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, alleging Iran of serious violations. President Biden has said the United States wants to rejoin the pact. On Thursday, the US State Department said the US would accept an invitation from the European Union to attend a meeting of the participants in the original agreement Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran. The Trump administration’s decision to invoke a provision in the 2015 council resolution allowing the snapback of sanctions because Iran was insignificant non-performance with its obligations under the accord was ignored by the rest of the Security Council and the world.

It is noteworthy that the overwhelming majority of members in the 15-nation council called Trump’s action illegal because the US was no longer a member of the JCPOA. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the United Nations would not support re-imposing sanctions on Iran as the United States was demanding until he got a green light from the Security Council. He said there was uncertainty on whether or not the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo had triggered the snapback mechanism.