Trump is threatening to snapback Iran sanctions because his supporters are terrified of a Biden win

Faced with the prospect of a likely defeat in November, says Borzou Daragahi, the administration is desperately seeking to sabotage the remnants of the Iran nuclear deal

Mike Pompeo has argued Iran could pose a threat to Europe (AFP via Getty)

Many nations have doubts about the expiring United Nations Security Council arms embargo on Iran. It is set to be lifted in October as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal that was signed by Tehran and other world powers – a deal that Donald Trump’s administration has actively tried to sabotage since coming to power.

On Friday, Trump’s enforcers at the UN sought to extend the arms embargo but failed miserably. Now wait for the Trump administration’s attempt to use a provision of the same JCPOA it flamboyantly renounced more than two years ago to either get the arms embargo extended or else do serious damage to the Security Council.

In Friday’s vote at the UN, veto-wielding Russia and China predictably voted no. But 11 members of the Security Council, including permanent members Britain and France and Nato members Germany, Belgium and Estonia, abstained.

The only other country Washington could convince to get on board its scheme to extend the 13-year arms embargo was the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, a rotating Security Council member with zero stake in the security architecture of the Middle East but it will be given a high-profile visit by Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, today in return for its vote.

“I regret ... that the whole world didn’t join against the world’s largest state sponsor of terror to ensure that they can’t have weapons systems that present risk – risk to the heart of Europe; air defence systems that will prevent the access we may need in the event that Iran should ultimately move on developing its own nuclear weapons programme,” Pompeo said on Saturday during a meeting with Jacek Czaputowicz, the Polish foreign minister.

Following the vote, Iran gloated at what it described as a major defeat for the Trump administration. “This is the first time that America puts forward a draft resolution at the UNSC and only one small island country votes for it,” Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, said in a speech on Saturday. “See what humiliation the USA faced!”

The arms embargo fiasco underscores the differing views of Iran throughout much of the world and in Washington. In the eyes of many world leaders, Iran’s actions in the Middle East are disruptive, unhelpful, aggressive and destabilising to the region. But to many nations, so too are the actions of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as the US, all of which buy and sell the most advanced weapons of war with ease.

The Trump administration’s arguments are loaded with mendacities and half-truths. It says Security Council members should listen to those in the Middle East closest to the Iranian threat. But an Arab Barometer poll last year of Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, Jordanians, Moroccans, Yemenis, Libyans, Algerians, Tunisians, Kuwaitis and Iraqis found respondents overwhelmingly perceive Israel as a greater threat than Iran.

Pompeo has argued a well-armed Iran could ultimately pose a threat to Europe. But in a YouGov poll last year, 41 per cent of Germans listed Trump as the greatest threat to world peace while only 8 per cent cited Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Outside of Israel and the wealthy Gulf states close to the Trump White House, leaders across the world generally view Trump’s Iran stance as destructive, disproportionate and irrational, shaped by a malicious clique of unhinged ideologues inside the Beltway who are hell-bent on overthrowing the tyrannical regime in Tehran regardless of the cost to the region and to Iranians.

It’s a posture artificially signal-boosted on social media and satellite television channels by a lunatic cult of Iranian exile militants holed up in a high-security compound in Albania, along with a fringe of wealthy, bored monarchists in southern California and the suburbs of Washington, many of whom have not been to Iran in more than 40 years.

Pompeo describes the attempt to extend the embargo as a way to prevent Iran from “expanding and modernising its arsenal” of weapons to “spread even greater chaos and destruction”.

In reality, the lifting of the arms embargo won’t make much of a difference. Iran will continue to be banned from buying weapons from Europe for years. It’s also practically broke and won’t be able to buy advanced weapons from China and Russia any time soon. Despite the embargo, Iran has bought, produced and sold weapons through subterranean channels for years, and will continue to do so.

More than anything, the arms embargo is the latest political tool the Washington anti-Iran lobby has latched on to in pursuit of broader aims, a rallying cry to keep the faithful engaged. Just like Vladimir Putin hitched himself to Trump as an easily manipulated dupe, the anti-Iran crowd attached itself to the White House to pursue its decades-long cause. Now, faced with the prospect of a likely Trump defeat in November, they’re desperately seeking to sabotage the remnants of the JCPOA before potential president Joe Biden comes into office on 20 January and possibly attempts to normalise relations with Tehran as former president Barack Obama did.

Pompeo says the US will “continue to work diplomatically to try and achieve precisely the right outcome that I think the entire world understands”.

But Trump on Saturday announced that his administration officials will pursue a scheme to deploy a provision of the JCPOA it abandoned that allows for a “snapback” of international sanctions on Iran should it be found in violation of the terms of the agreement by any of the signatories.

“We’ll be doing the snapback,” Trump said on Saturday evening. “You’ll be watching it next week.”

International jurists have said the plot is legally dubious at best – especially since the US pulled out of the deal. One commentator described it as the diplomatic equivalent of “dumping your girlfriend and then arguing that you have veto power over who her next boyfriend is going to be”.

But that won’t stop the White House from trying, and potentially setting, a terrible precedent that will damage the Security Council unless it gets its way.

Those who argue for snapback have a point. Tehran has been slowly downgrading its adherence to the strictures of the JCPOA over the last year and a half as the US has upped international sanctions on it. Iran has argued that its declining commitment to the deal is a proper response to European companies abiding by US extraterritorial sanctions and failing to do business with Tehran. European officials argue that private companies can’t be ordered to do business with Iran.

Still, legally, the snapback provision is part of the JCPOA, and is not mentioned in the 105-page UN Security Council resolution.

Iran in recent months has refrained from dramatic moves and slowed any non-compliance with JCPOA rules on enriched uranium output and centrifuges in operation, as a Biden victory has become more likely. Iran’s national security establishment wants to be in a position to be able to return to the JCPOA status quo should Biden be elected.

“Look at the power of the JCPOA,” Rouhani said on Saturday in comments that will undoubtedly be picked up by Biden’s foreign policy hands. “The same half-dead JCPOA stood up to America and defeated it.”

The only reason the Trump administration is pursuing the matter with such urgency is political.

In the coming weeks, look out for the Iran regime-change advocates trying various desperate measures to back Tehran into a corner, perhaps even risk a military confrontation, to permanently prevent anything resembling a move towards normalisation and de-escalation with Iran if Trump leaves office. Their obsessive fixation on Iran is myopic and, as long as Trump remains in power, dangerous.