By Majid Rafizadeh, Gatestone Institute—
While Iran’s ruling mullahs have been celebrating their rewards from the nuclear deal — which, by the way, Iran never signed — according to its terms, the arms embargo against the Islamic Republic is scheduled to be lifted on October 18, 2020.
On June 30, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo urged the United Nations Security Council to extend the arms embargo on Iran. The Security Council, however — particularly China — was reluctant to do so. The UN Security Council’s unwillingness seems yet another indication of why the United States, having pulled out of the Human Rights Council and threatening to pull out of the World Health Organization in 2021, should finally go all the way and pull out of the whole “Club of Thugs” that the United Nations has become. At the very least, as has been suggested, “We pay for what we want. We insist what we get, what we pay for. We abolish the system of mandatory contribution….”
Rather than being the cure for world peace, the UN is now a major obstacle to world peace. The Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky, once suggested at a meeting attended by Gatestone that if delegates to the UN are not allowed to vote in their own countries, they also should not be allowed to vote at the UN. The United Nations appears to have turned into a place that, instead of preventing war, preserves war.
The primary objective of any nuclear talks with Tehran should have been to halt Iran’s nuclear program permanently, thereby eliminating the possibility of a nuclear arms race in the region and removing the strategic threat that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to the world.
However, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told the Council on Foreign Relations at the time, “Let’s establish a mechanism for a number of years. Not 10, not 15 — but I’m willing to live with less.”
So, the “sunset clauses” — a glide-path to legitimate nuclear capability — were given to the ruling mullahs — in exchange, apparently, for nothing. The sunset clauses essentially allow the Iranian regime, after the period of the agreement, to resume enriching uranium at a level they desire, spin as many advanced centrifuges as they want, make its reactors fully operational, build new heavy water reactors, produce as much nuclear fuel as it desires for its reactors, and maintain higher uranium enrichment capability with no restrictions. Continue Reading…
