Senior Republican says Europe left US with only one option on Iran arms embargo

A senior US Republican senator Monday reprimanded European allies for standing with Iran’s “Death to America regime,” days after Washington’s efforts to extend the arms embargo on Tehran failed at UN Security Council vote.

Senator Ted Cruz said that the US was now left with enforcing the snapback mechanism as the only option to prevent the arms embargo from expiring.

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“It’s time for the United States to finally and irreversibly end what remains of the disastrous deal and the benefits that Iran gets from it by invoking the snapback mechanism described in the deal’s United Nations resolution," Cruz said in a statement.

The snapback would require Iran to suspend all nuclear enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, and ban imports of anything that could contribute to those activities or to the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems.

It would reimpose the arms embargo, ban Iran from developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and reimpose targeted sanctions on dozens of individuals and entities. Countries also would be urged to inspect shipments to and from Iran and authorized to seize any banned cargo.

For the snapback to be triggered, the US would have to submit a complaint about Iran breaching the nuclear deal to the Security Council.

The council would then have to vote within 30 days on a resolution to continue Iran’s sanctions relief. If such a resolution is not put forward by the deadline, all UN sanctions in place before the 2015 nuclear deal would be automatically reimposed.

After Friday's failed vote, US President Donald Trump already said that he would trigger the snapback of sanctions at the UN.

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