Pompeo to use nuclear accord Trump rejected to extend Iran arms embargo

WASHINGTON • US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is preparing a legal argument that the country remains a participant in the Iran nuclear accord that President Donald Trump has renounced, part of a strategy to pressure the UN Security Council to extend an arms embargo on Teheran or see far more stringent sanctions reimposed on the country.

The strategy has been described in recent days by administration officials as they begin to circulate a new resolution in the Security Council that would bar countries from exporting conventional arms to Iran after the current ban expires in October.

Any effort to renew the arms embargo is almost certain to be opposed by Russia and, publicly or quietly, by China.

The Russians have already told American and European officials that they are eager to resume conventional arms sales to Iran.

In an effort to force the issue, Mr Pompeo has approved a plan, bound to be opposed by many of Washington's European allies, under which the United States would, in essence, claim that it legally remains a "participant state" in the nuclear accord that Mr Trump has denounced - but only for the purposes of invoking a "snapback" that would restore the UN sanctions on Iran that were in place before the accord.

If the arms embargo is not renewed, the US would exercise that right as an original member of the agreement. That step would force a restoration of the wide array of sanctions that prohibited oil sales and banking arrangements before the adoption of the agreement in 2015. Enforcing those older sanctions would, in theory, be binding on all members of the United Nations.

European diplomats who have learned of the strategy maintain that Mr Trump and Mr Pompeo are selectively choosing whether they are still in the agreement to fit their agenda.

The entire drama could play out this autumn in the weeks before the US presidential election, setting up a potential confrontation with Iran in the midst of the contest.

Political calculations aside, the administration's larger plan could go beyond imposing harsher sanctions on Iran. It is also to force Teheran to give up any pretence of preserving the Obama-era deal.

Only by shattering it, many senior administration officials say, will Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani be forced to negotiate an entirely new agreement more to Mr Trump's liking.

Asked about the strategy, Mr Pompeo told The New York Times: "We cannot allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to purchase conventional weapons in six months. President (Barack) Obama should never have agreed to end the UN arms embargo."

He added: "We are prepared to exercise all of our diplomatic options to ensure the arms embargo stays in place at the UN Security Council."

Mr Pompeo has warned that if the weapons embargo is not extended, Iran will supply more arms to groups that the US considers terrorists, including Syrian militias and Hizbollah. Even his critics on Capitol Hill agree that he is probably right about what would happen to those arms.

NYTIMES