US in no position to snap back Security Council sanctions: Iran

Iran has dismissed propagation by certain foreign media outlets that a request by Washington would reinstate the United Nations Security Council’s sanctions against Tehran.

According to Press TV, speaking to reporters on Friday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the US would never achieve its illegitimate objectives.

The current news stream, the Iranian official added, is preaching a situation where a mere request coming out of the White House has nullified the Security Council resolutions and re-imposed the sanctions subsequently.

“This is while the US has no authority to take such action and has only submitted a ‘request’ to the rotating president of the Security Council in a measure in violation of the international law and of the [UN Security Council] Resolution 2231.”

He noted that all parties to the multilateral nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have rejected such a request.

“The US has become so isolated even among its allies that it has called the three European countries (Britain, France and Germany) the allies of Iran’s ayatollahs,” the Iranian diplomat said.

He reiterated that all the remaining parties to the JCPOA, including the three European states, Russia and China, “immediately and strongly” opposed such a “groundless and illegal” request.

Khatibzadeh expected that the other members of the Council adopt a similar stance in the coming days.

As part of an illegal underway push, the United States is trying to invoke a “snapback” mechanism in the JCPOA despite its withdrawal in May 2018 in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorses the nuclear deal.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Khatibzadeh pointed to a recent meeting of the Security Council in which a US-initiated resolution on the extension of an arms embargo on Iran faced opposition from all member states, except one country, and said, “Washington will never achieve its illegitimate objective.”

He emphasized that the White House’s primary and final purpose is to promote economic terrorism against the Iranian people by resorting to political and unilateral tools, mostly psychological warfare and propaganda, and by disrupting the Islamic Republic's psychological and economic stability and security.

The spokesman said Iran's Foreign Ministry had made its utmost efforts and employed its full political and legal capacities over the past seven years to promote the powerful and logical image of Iran in the international arena and is currently trying to once again force the “American law-breakers” to experience isolation in line with its bids to counter the US unilateralism and law-breaking.

SS