WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted Friday that Washington would enforce sweeping sanctions on Iran, even though the United Nations Security Council voted to not extend an arms embargo on the rogue regime.
Pompeo, who addressed the 15 member nations of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, reiterated that the Trump administration will continue its maximum pressure campaign in order to rein in Tehran’s missile and nuclear weapons programs.
“I have not had a single world leader or one of my counterparts tell me that they think it makes any sense at all for the Iranians to be able to purchase and sell high-end weapons systems, which is what will happen on October 18th of this year, absent the actions that we took at the United Nations yesterday,” Pompeo told CNBC.
“We’re not going to let them have a nuclear weapon, we’re not going to let them have hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth from selling weapons systems. Every leader around the world knows it’s a bad idea,” he said, calling Iran “the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.”
The Trump administration has previously pushed members of the Security Council to extend a U.N.-imposed arms embargo on Iran. The embargo is currently set to end in October under the 2015 nuclear deal brokered, in part, by the Obama administration.
Last week, the Security Council voted to not extend the international arms embargo on Iran, a decision that prompted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to formally notify the group on Thursday of the U.S. intention to “snap back” or restore all U.N. sanctions on Iran.
Thirty days after Pompeo’s notification, a range of U.N. sanctions will be restored, including the requirement that Iran suspends all enrichment-related activities. The “snap back” will also extend the 13-year arms embargo on Iran.
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/us-prepared-to-enforce-sweeping-un-sanctions-on-iran-pompeo-says.html