>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is preparing a legal argument that the United States remains a participant in the Iran nuclear accord that President Trump has renounced, part of an intricate strategy to pressure the United Nations Security Council to extend an arms embargo on Tehran or see far more stringent sanctions reimposed on the country.
>The strategy has been described in recent days by administration officials as they begin to circulate a new resolution in the Security Council that would bar countries from exporting conventional arms to Iran after the current ban expires in October. Any effort to renew the arms embargo is almost certain to be opposed by Russia and, publicly or quietly, by China. The Russians have already told American and European officials they are eager to resume conventional arms sales to Iran.
>In an effort to force the issue, Mr. Pompeo has approved a plan, bound to be opposed by many of Washington’s European allies, under which the United States would, in essence, claim it legally remains a “participant state” in the nuclear accord that Mr. Trump has denounced — but only for the purposes of invoking a “snapback” that would restore the U.N. sanctions on Iran that were in place before the accord.
>If the arms embargo is not renewed, the United States would exercise that right as an original member of the agreement. That step would force a restoration of the wide array of the sanctions that prohibited oil sales and banking arrangements before the adoption of the agreement in 2015. Enforcing those older sanctions would, in theory, be binding on all members of the United Nations.
>European diplomats who have learned of the effort maintain that Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo are selectively choosing whether they are still in the agreement to fit their agenda.
>The entire drama could play out this autumn in the weeks before the presidential election, setting up a potential confrontation with Iran in the midst of the contest.
>Political calculations aside, the administration’s larger plan may go beyond imposing harsher sanctions on Iran. It is also to force Tehran to give up any pretense of preserving the Obama-era agreement. Only by shattering it, many senior administration officials say, will Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani be forced to negotiate an entirely new agreement more to Mr. Trump’s liking.
>Iran has resisted even opening talks with the Trump administration, saying that before it would sit down Mr. Trump to amend the previous agreement, the United States would have to re-enter the accord and fully abide by its terms. Mr. Trump has refused.
>The intricate strategy has been described by senior administration officials involved in devising it. Asked about it, Mr. Pompeo said in a statement to The New York Times: “We cannot allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to purchase conventional weapons in six months. President Obama should never have agreed to end the U.N. arms embargo.”
>“We are prepared to exercise all of our diplomatic options to ensure the arms embargo stays in place at the U.N. Security Council,” he added.
>A draft of the American resolution to extend the arms embargo indefinitely has been shared with some members of the Security Council by Brian H. Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, who is carrying out the new strategy.
>In trips to New York and Paris, he has described the administration’s insistence that Tehran never receive even small conventional arms, much less missiles. But he did not explain the next step if the arms embargo lapses: an effort to unilaterally force the imposition of even more crushing sanctions.
>The timing is critical for Iran, which has been ravaged by the coronavirus. A month ago, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, wrote to the world’s largest economic powers and urged a lifting of economic sanctions on Iran, along with Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Zimbabwe. “I am encouraging the waiving of sanctions imposed on countries to ensure access to food, essential health supplies, and Covid-19 medical support,” he wrote. “This is the time for solidarity not exclusion.”
>He did not say how long that waiver should last, and his appeal has made little progress.
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