TEHRAN - Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador to the United States, has said that the Western allies of Washington have rejected legitimacy of snapback mechanism which says a lot about the international status of the U.S.

“That the closest western allies of the US unambiguously reject the legitimacy of using the SnapBack procedure set in R. 2231 confirms their commitment to the JCPOA, their opposition to the maximum pressure policy against Iran and says a lot about the world status of the US today,” Araud tweeted on Friday.

Richard Haass says: “America First truly has become America alone.”Also Wendy Sherman, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs who led the U.S. negotiating team that concluded the Iran nuclear agreement, told MSNBC in an interview on Thursday, “My take is that the president has once again isolated the United States from the rest of the world and instead of isolating Iran from the rest of the world.”

Colin H. Kahl, Joe Biden’s national security advisor from 2014 to the end of the administration and now a professor at Stanford University, also said in a tweet on Friday, “A diplomatic standoff over restoring international sanctions against Iran may be the most vivid example yet of how the United States has largely isolated itself from the world order — instead of isolating Tehran, as the Trump administration intended.”

In a joint statement on Thursday the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, whose countries are signatory to the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPO), issued a joint statement saying they cannot support the United States’ action in triggering the snapback mechanism to return all the UN sanctions on Iran.

The U.S. on Thursday formally began the process of activating snapback mechanism aimed at reimposing all the UN sanctions on Iran.

Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, also tweeted on Friday, “America First truly has become America alone. Foreign policy unilateralism has isolated the US more than Iran. Cake & eat it diplomacy, withdrawing from the JCPOA then seeking its benefits, is a non-starter.”

NA/PA