US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a news conference in Washington on Sept. 2, 2020. (AP)
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday the US would return to the United Nations to reimpose sanctions on Iran next week and would do all it needed to do to make sure those sanctions are enforced.
Pompeo made the comments in a joint news conference in Washington with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.
Pompeo said last month he had triggered a 30-day process to reimpose all UN sanctions on Iran by lodging a complaint with the Security Council accusing Tehran of breaching a 2015 nuclear deal.
Pompeo has said sanctions should be reimposed from Sunday.
But 13 of the 15 council members said the US move is void because Washington withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal two years ago.
A picture taken on November 10, 2019, shows an Iranian flag in Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant. (AFP)
Pompeo said Tuesday that America’s “European friends” did not support the proposed US resolution of extending the UN arms embargo on Iran - put forward by the US last month - because of fear and political calculations.
“Our European allies fear that if they hold Iran accountable for its destabilizing behavior, Iran will violate the [nuclear deal] even more in response,” he said in statements to the US Virtual Iran Embassy.
“This strategy of appeasement does nothing but play into Iran’s grand strategy,” Pompeo said.
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