US Push to Extend UN Arms on Iran Jeopardizes JCPOA: Russia
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Washington’s bid to extend an arms embargo on Iran jeopardizes the prospect of the JCPOA’s continued preservation.
The US push was “not only unjustified but also counterproductive in terms of the prospects of preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” Russia’s Sputnik news agency quoted Maria Zakharova as saying on Thursday.
The ban will expire in October under the historic nuclear accord endorsed by the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2231.
In May 2018, US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled his country out of the JCPOA and later re-imposed the sanctions that had been lifted against Tehran on the back of the deal.
Although it is no longer a party to the deal, Washington has recently launched a campaign to renew the embargo on the sales of conventional weapons to the Islamic Republic.
The US recently served the UNSC with a draft resolution on the extension of the arms embargo, however; its appeal fell flat at the United Nations Security Council, where Russia and China rejected it outright and close allies of the US were ambivalent.
Addressing a virtual UNSC meeting on Tuesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the United States was an “outlaw bully” that the world body should not surrender to, warning that giving in to Washington’s pressure threatens to restore the “law of the jungle.”