TEHRAN - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that the United States’ attempt to trigger snapback mechanism and restore all sanctions on Iran might trigger a serious scandal at the UN Security Council and eventually undermine its authority.

“We are working with our U.S. partners and other Security Council members in New York and in capitals. We understand that the vast majority of nations realize the incorrectness and counter-productivity of this attempt. It will produce no result anyway, but it might eventually lead to a very serious scandal and a rift within the UN Security Council, and, in the final analysis, undermine its authority,” TASS quoted him as saying on Sunday in an interview with the Rossiya-1 TV channel.

He noted that  Washington withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“The thing is that one of the states behind the consensus resolution on Iran’s nuclear program announced that it would not comply with the obligations it had undertaken, but at the same time demanded that others follow its recommendations,” Lavrov said.

“[They] announced that no one can stop the United States when it would decide to punish Iran for allegedly violating the agreement from which the U.S. had withdrawn. Sounds paradoxical and quite clumsy, but this is how it is,” Lavrov said. “The U.S. declared that it would not comply with its obligations - not to impose new sanctions on Iran, to lift the existing restrictions and let the Islamic Republic of Iran participate fully in international trade and economic exchanges. The United States said they were not going to do this and, what is more, will prohibit everyone else from doing this in relation to Iran.”

On August 20, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo notified the UN that Washington was initiating the process to reinstate all UN sanctions on Iran. 

Washington’s move came shortly after a U.S. draft resolution on extending the arms embargo on Iran failed to get the required number of votes to be adopted by the UN Security Council.

Lavrov says extending arms embargo on Iran is not legal

Lavrov also said that the U.S. attempt to extend arms embargo on Iran, which expires in October, has no legal, political or moral grounds.

“We explained it all clearly to our American partners. Nevertheless, they made the decision to submit a relevant resolution. Only one country - the Dominican Republic - voted to support it along with the United States. Russia and China voted against. The remaining 11 members of the UN Security Council, including European countries, abstained from voting on this resolution. Therefore, there even was no need to use the veto, because it is necessary only when a resolution receives no less than nine votes. This time, there was only two,” he said.

Elsewhere, he said that the U.S. attempt to restore sanctions against Iran is a clear example of how Western nations try to replace the notion of “international law” with “rule-based order.”

“There have been many examples of this, and they are becoming more and more frequent. This is a very dangerous tendency,” Lavrov added.

He also said that the U.S. will not be able to violate the UN Security Council resolution and distort the internationally sealed agreement, but “they can still deal damage to the UN Security Council.”

“We will try our best to dissuade our U.S. partners from such reckless moves,” Lavrov said.

NA/PA