Whining Pompeo vows to do utmost to renew Iran arms embargo

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) and Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg address a joint press conference during a meeting in Vienna, Austria, August 14, 2020. (Photo by AFP)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that the failure to extend a UN arms embargo on Iran was a serious mistake.

"It's a serious mistake, we regret that," he told news conference on Saturday during a visit to Poland.

Pompeo vowed to keep pushing for a Washington-proposed extension of the international arms embargo on Iran despite strong global opposition to this illegal embargo.

On Friday,  the 15-member United Nations Security Council rejected the US bid to extend the arms embargo due to expire in October under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Pompeo said the Trump administration would continue its anti-Iran efforts in spite of the diplomatic defeat.

"We are going to do everything that we can within our diplomatic toolset to ensure that arms embargo doesn't expire," Pompeo told reporters in Vienna on Friday after the  US bid to renew the arms embargo against Iran had been rejected by the Security Council.  

Speaking at a joint news conference with his Austrian counterpart, Alexander Schallenberg, the US Secretary of State said the rejection of the US proposal for an extension of the Iran arms embargo made "no sense", adding, the fact that some countries kept heir promise of ending the arms embargo on Iran "is just nuts".

Pompeo went on to describe Iran as "the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism", urging "the whole world to join" in on Washington's maximum pressure campaign against the Iranian nation which started after the Trump administration's unilateral cancellation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) 

The top US diplomat insisted that the Washington-Tehran stand-off was not only linked to the nuclear deal, but also "whether the world is going to allow Iran to buy and sell weapons systems." 

Pompeo insisted also that Iran must give the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog full and immediate reports of its activities.

Before the US bid was rejected by the Security Council, Pompeo said that Washington had "no intention of allowing this arms embargo to expire. None whatsoever."

However, Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York urged the Security Council to resist the “illegal” move by the US to extend the arms embargo on the Islamic Republic.

Meanwhile, China, Russia and other European countries, who support the landmark Iran nuclear deal, have showed their strong opposition to US polices, particularly in regard to the "illegal" extension of the arms embargo.

The JCPOA is an extensive plan that was signed between Iran and the P5+1 (China France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) on July 14, 2015, and endorsed on July 20, 2015 by the UN in Security Council Resolution 2231.

Prior to the Iran nuclear deal, the West had formerly accused Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program. Tehran, however, always dismissed such allegations as being false, making assurance  that Tehran had a civilian nuclear program. The JCPOA was the culmination of the two sides negotiations to remove the suspicions in this regard. However, on 12 October 2017, US President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal citing fresh allegations against Iran. 


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