Donald Trump wants to restore US sanctions against Iran - Sipa USA / SIPA

The United States announced on Wednesday that it will formally activate a legally controversial mechanism that could permanently end the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he asked his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "to notify the UN Security Council that the United States intends to restore virtually all United Nations sanctions against Iran."

Mike Pompeo then confirmed that he would go to New York on Thursday afternoon for this "notification", the first step in a complex procedure that risks lasting dividing the great powers and isolating Washington.

Risky game for the Trump administration

This anti-Iran hawk had threatened for weeks to resort to the so-called “snapback” mechanism if the embargo on conventional arms on the Islamic Republic was not extended beyond its scheduled expiry in October.

However, the American resolution to renew the embargo met with a resounding failure on Friday: only two of the fifteen members of the Security Council voted in favor.

This is a risky game for the Trump administration to play. The Republican president in fact withdrew the United States in 2018 from the agreement concluded three years earlier by his country and other great powers (China, Russia, France, United Kingdom and Germany) with Iran, for prevent him from acquiring the atomic bomb. He reiterated Wednesday that it was a "disastrous" compromise, overwhelming his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama and his vice-president Joe Biden, who will challenge him in November in the race for the White House.

Donald Trump has already toughened US sanctions

His government now intends to invoke its status as a country "participating" in this same nuclear agreement, on the grounds that the UN resolution which ratified it thus designates all of its initial signatories.

However, according to this resolution, the “participants” can unilaterally denounce a “significant non-compliance” with their “commitments” by another signatory, an unprecedented procedure that is supposed to make it possible, after 30 days, to restore, or “ snapback ”, international sanctions against Tehran which had been lifted in exchange for its promise on atomic matters. And this, without the possibility for others, like Moscow or Beijing, to oppose their veto.

Donald Trump has already restored and even toughened US sanctions in the hope of bending the Iranian regime.

He wants to force the international community to do the same, and the chosen tempo should allow him to proclaim victory at the UN Annual General Assembly at the end of September.

"We do not consider that the United States is legally entitled to activate the snapback"

"Thirty days after Secretary of State Pompeo's notification, a series of UN sanctions will be reinstated, including the demand that Iran suspend all activities related to the" enrichment "of uranium, while the arms embargo will be "extended", assured the State Department.

Mike Pompeo said he expects "all countries in the world will honor their obligations."

The argument consisting in claiming to be a “participant” of an agreement that we left with a bang does not pass, however, including among the European allies of Washington who are trying to save the text.

"We do not consider that the United States is legally entitled to activate the snapback", loose a French diplomatic source, which warns that the stratagem will oppose the refusal of almost all the members of the Security Council.

"They will pull the trigger, and nothing will come out of the gun"

"They will pull the trigger, and nothing will come out of the rifle," adds this source. Result, according to her: no reinstatement of sanctions or the embargo, but "a lot of disorder", "a transatlantic rupture", and "a weakening of the authority of the Security Council".

"No one denies that this strategy is controversial and difficult to implement", told AFP Behnam Ben Taleblu, of the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies in tip against Tehran, which however makes Europeans take the hat off. a possible division. If the sanctions were refused, "it would be them, and not America, who would attack the Council's standards and rules - and that would be a shame," he says.

An attempt to "try to kill once and for all" the Iran nuclear deal

While many Washington observers and allies agree that the arms embargo should be extended and worry about the revival of Iranian uranium enrichment activities in response to US sanctions, many denounce the billionaire's ulterior motives Republican, in a difficult position for the presidential election of November 3.

This whole procedure is an attempt "by the Trump administration to attempt to kill once and for all" the Iran nuclear deal "and to make its resurrection exceedingly difficult" even in the event of alternation in the White House, he believes. ex-diplomat Wendy Sherman, who negotiated the text under the Obama administration.

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