“The path forward with Iran would have to be sanctions relief,” said Professor Vali Reza Nasr while talking to the CNN news network.
Nasr said that the Trump administration has shown that how ineffective and “inexact” the sanctions can be.
Commenting on certain US provocative measures against Iran, he went on to say that Trump’s administration “has gone out of its way to provoke Iran into some kind of action,” but Iran has decided that “it’s not to their advantage to go to war,” because "they do not want to do anything that will help Trump.”
In mid-August, Washington proposed a resolution to the UNSC to extend Iran’s arms embargo that are to be terminated on October 18. The US proposal met absolute failure because the resolutions could gain only two yes votes – the US and the Dominican Republic.
Less than a week later, the US started to activate the snapback mechanism to restore all the UNSC sanctions on Iran. The mechanism was designed by and for the members of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the UNSCR 2231 which reiterates this fact. The US officially withdrew from the deal on 8 May, 2018.
On August 20, the US gave its official demand to the UNSC to revive all the sanctions of the international body on Iran, which was almost unanimously rejected by the member states.
Even the US biggest European allies, i.e. the UK, Germany and France, made a reaction to the US request to activate the snapback mechanism in less than hour.
They said in a joint statement, “The US ceased to be a participant to the JCPoA following their withdrawal from the deal on 8 May, 2018... We cannot therefore support this action which is incompatible with our current efforts to support the JCPoA."
However, despite all the oppositions made by the UNSC, the US government announced on July 20 that it had unilaterally re-imposed all the sanctions.
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