From Maximum Pressure to Maximum Muddle on Iran

Pompeo expected to declare snapback of UN sanctions on Iran Thursday, while other members contest US standing to do so and whether it has gone into effect

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to travel to New York on Thursday to declare that the Trump administration is imposing the ‘snap back’ of UN sanctions on Iran, in what is widely seen as a last-ditch ploy by the Trump administration to try to collapse the 2015 Iran nuclear deal before the US elections. 

Other UN Security Council members are expected to dispute that the United States has the standing to do so, two years after Trump quit the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—while explicitly announcing it was ceasing participation in it. Indeed, even Trump’s own former national security advisor and architect of his Iran deal exit plan, John Bolton, has argued that the U.S. imposing snapback after quitting the deal would be illegitimate and a mistake.

“I think we all know what is going on here,” Wendy Sherman, former Under Secretary of State and top US Iran deal negotiator, told journalists on an International Crisis Group Zoom call Tuesday. “All of this is a gambit by the Trump administration to try to kill the JCPOA once and for all and to make it exceedingly difficult to resurrect it, hopefully when Joe Biden becomes president of the U.S.”

While Pompeo seems like he is trying to draw maximum attention to his UN consultations—(he is planning to meet with the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at 2pm Thursday, as well as with Indonesian ambassador to the UN Dian Triansyah Djani who this month holds the presidency of the UN Security Council, and to speak to the press at 3pm)—that may be precisely because there is currently no “big bang” or vote or council session to debate the contentious matter expected. 

Indeed, the U.S. unilateral declaration of snapback is likely to be greeted “by silence” from the majority of other council members, at least in the short term, a UN diplomat, speaking on background, said Wednesday. Some European capitals may subsequently issue a statement that they do not believe the United States has the standing to impose snapback.

“I think it will really be a process that will peter away and not end with a bang,” Sherman said, of the US snapback declaration. “At the end of the day, it will go out with a whimper, not with a bang.”

The resistance to the US action will be political, low-key, and undertaken in more quiet consultations, said Richard Gowan, UN expert at the International Crisis Group.

“There won’t be a vote on the issue,” Gowan said on the ICG call. “There may not be a big bang.”

“The most likely scenario is a rancorous quarrel in New York, at the end of which the U.S. will assert that sanctions have legitimately been restored; Russia and China say they have not; and European nations…do their best to avoid both trouble with Iran and injury to the international body,” the International Crisis Group writes in a new report    on the anticipated standoff, urging remaining proponents of the Iran nuclear deal “to greet the Trump administration’s claim that sanctions have been reimposed with a collective shrug, making plain that they dispute the move’s legitimacy and that they will neither recognise new sanctions nor give them any effect.” 

Pompeo angrily rebuffed the suggestion that the U.S. action at the UN may be rejected by other council members as illegitimate and ultimately not go into effect.

“These will be fully valid, enforceable Security Council resolutions,” Pompeo, speaking at a news conference with the visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, said Wednesday. “We have every expectation that they will be enforced just like every other UN Security Council resolution that is in place.”

The timing of the US snapback declaration, which theoretically takes 30 days to go into effect, is seemingly guided—as always—by Trump’s domestic political considerations. Trump is due to address the opening session of the UN General Assembly—either virtually or in person—the last week of September—which happens to be a few days after the 30 day mark of the anticipated US declaration, Gowan noted.

“By mid-October,” when the UN Iran arms embargo is meant to lapse, “we will be in a high state of confusion,” that will likely last until the end of the year, Gowan said.

“Most diplomats in New York are watching the U.S. elections,” he said. If Trump wins a second term, it is hard to see how the Iran nuclear deal could be sustained, he said. “If Biden wins, I think everyone will sit tight and hope they will be able to rebuild diplomacy on Iran at the UN in 2021.” 

Outgoing Trump administration envoy on Iran Brian Hook said Tuesday that he was still hopeful there would be a second Trump term, and that the maximum pressure policy on Iran should continue, even if it does not result in a new negotiated  agreement.

“We have put in place enormous leverage for a second term, to get the kind of outcomes that we need, deal or no deal,” Hook said on a Zoom called hosted by United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) Tuesday. “The President would like to get a deal. Whether we have one or not, this policy needs to continue.”

(Photo credit: Susan Walsh/AP. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein at the State Department in Washington, August 19, 2020.)