Iran has criticized the Gulf Cooperation Council’s request to the UN Security Council to extend the arms embargo imposed on it, which ends within two months, at a time when Washington is seeking to obtain an international resolution extending the embargo, but it faces opposition from Russia and China.
In a statement today, Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi described the Gulf Cooperation Council (which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar) a failure, and said that he is witnessing internal disputes, and that he requested the United Nations to extend the arms embargo on Iran, ignoring the facts and priorities in the region. Under the current sensitive circumstances, as he put it.
Mousavi said that the statement of the General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council in this regard is not responsible, and it appears that it has become a platform for voices hostile to Iran.
The Iranian spokesman added that the Gulf statement comes at a time when some GCC countries continue to buy weapons from the United States, and continue what he described as their wrong policy of aggression against Yemen that causes the killing of women and children, he said.
The ban that prevents Iran from buying weapons from abroad - such as planes, warships and tanks - ends on October 18, under the nuclear deal that Tehran concluded with world powers in 2015, and Washington withdrew from it in 2018.
Draft resolution
In a tweet on Twitter, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised the message sent by the Secretariat General of the Gulf Cooperation Council to the Security Council, in which it called for the need to extend the arms embargo on Iran, and said that the Security Council must choose between "arming terrorists" or standing by Gulf countries.
Pompeo said that his country will present - this week - a new draft resolution to the Security Council, calling for the extension of the arms embargo on Iran. The US Secretary wrote in an article last Wednesday that the Security Council will vote this week on a draft resolution in this regard.
But diplomats said that the US draft lacked sufficient support, in light of Russia and China 's opposition to an extension of the embargo.
Weeks ago, Pompeo said that if the embargo was not extended, Iran would be able to acquire advanced weapons and become "the number one arms dealer for terrorists and rogue regimes in the world."
Washington threatened that it would re-impose all UN sanctions on Tehran if it was unable to obtain an international resolution extending its arms embargo.
Last May, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened a "crushing" response if the embargo was extended, while other Iranian officials asserted that their country would, despite everything, move forward with developing its arsenal of conventional weapons.