The United Nations Security Council does not support the triggering of the snapback mechanism claimed by Washington because the US is no longer part of the historic nuclear agreement of 2015 and therefore no longer has any legal leverage, said Sarif.
The „snapback“ is a possibility for the member states of the nuclear agreement to denounce Iranian rule violations before the Security Council. This means that all UN sanctions from the time before the Vienna Agreement was agreed can be enforced – without other members being able to prevent this with a veto. In their opinion, the US initiated this process in August, which is why the US State Department announced that the sanctions against Iran that had been suspended years ago would come into force overnight.
Many do not recognize US reasoning
The USA threatened that if the UN member states did not meet “their obligation to implement the sanctions”, the USA would “draw conclusions”. In fact, the vast majority of the members of the UN Security Council do not recognize the arguments put forward by the US side because the United States terminated the agreement with Iran in 2018.
The Iranian chief diplomat Sarif scoffed at the fact that the US was still mentioned in the relevant UN resolution on Iran. The resolution is similar to a divorce certificate: „The names of the ex-partners are mentioned in the document, but officially and legally the couple no longer have anything to do with each other.“
Suffragette after a hunger strike in the hospital
The jailed Iranian women’s rights activist Nasrin Sotudeh was admitted to a Tehran hospital after a hunger strike that lasted more than 40 days. The 57-year-old has lost a lot of weight and is „seriously weakened,“ her husband Resa Chandan told the AFP news agency yesterday. Sotudeh went on a hunger strike to protest against the lack of protection for political prisoners from the corona virus.
According to official information, almost 420,000 people in Iran have been infected with the novel coronavirus so far, and more than 24,000 have died as a result of the infection. Because of the risk of contagion, the Iranian leadership had released almost 90,000 prisoners. Political prisoners were excluded from the measure.
Last year Sotudeh was sentenced to 33 years imprisonment and 148 strokes of the stick for allegedly insulting the revolutionary leader and espionage. Among other things, the women’s rights activist represented women who protested against compulsory headscarves in Iran. She has also worked for journalists, members of the opposition and dissidents such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. In 2012, Sotudeh was awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize.
