TEHRAN – Presidential chief of staff Mahmoud Vaezi says the United States will again face defeat if it triggers the snapback mechanism under the 2015 nuclear deal which the U.S. abandoned in 2019.

“In the [UN] Security Council vote, the international community once again opposed the U.S.’s unilateralism by protecting Barjam (nuclear deal),” Vaezi wrote in a tweet on Sunday.

“The U.S., continuing its mistakes, is seeking to trigger the snapback mechanism,” he wrote, adding, “With the same process that the recent resolution was rejected but even with a stronger political and legal argument, it will face defeat again.”

Vaezi also said U.S. President Donald Trump should have learned that politics is completely different from trade and “if he won’t change his past policies, he should await consecutive defeats.”

The remarks came after the United States’ efforts to extend an arms embargo on the Islamic Republic of Iran ended in a humiliating defeat at the UN Security Council, as 13 out of 15 members of the Council did not support its anti-Iran resolution.

Only two of the Council's 15 members voted in favor, highlighting the division between Washington and its European allies since Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord in May 2018.

Besides the United States, only the Dominican Republic voted in favor of the draft. China and Russia voted against the text, and the remaining 11 Security Council members, including the European allies of the United States, abstained.

President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday that the UN Security Council session and the act of rejecting the U.S. draft resolution was a “political victory” for Iran and a “political and legal failure” for Washington.

Following Washington’s failure at the UN Security Council, Trump announced that he intends to trigger the snapback mechanism, which would reimpose international sanctions against Iran at the United Nations.

The U.S. president made the announcement as he dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call for a summit of world leaders to decrease Iran tensions, saying he probably would not participate.

“We’ll be doing a snapback,” he told reporters on Saturday. “You’ll be watching it next week.”

The U.S. has for months threatened to trigger a return of all UN sanctions on Iran using a provision in the nuclear deal, even though Trump abandoned the accord in 2018.

Observers have predicted that the U.S. would face a tough, messy battle in any such move.

MH/PA