We all knew it was coming, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made it official on Thursday when he hand-delivered a letter to the president of the United Nations Security Council outlining why the United States was invoking the sanctions snapback provision in the Iran nuclear deal. “The United States will never allow the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism to freely buy and sell planes, tanks, missiles, and other kinds of conventional weapons … [or] to have a nuclear weapon,” Pompeo said during a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Pompeo’s case is straightforward: Iran has violated its commitments under the agreement, so it is only logical for the U.S. to reimpose all economic sanctions against Tehran.
If only it were that simple.
Washington’s interpretation of the U.N. Security Council resolution codifying the nuclear deal was met with an icy reception by the rest of the permanent members. Russia was indignant in its condemnation of Pompeo’s performance, insisting there was no snapback at all because the U.S. withdrew from the deal more than two years ago. China said mostly the same thing. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, three allies the U.S. can normally count in their corner, dismissed Washington’s attempt to trigger snapback as a danger to the entire U.N. system. Their joint statement was very much in line with a previous declaration issued by the three European nations in June, when they observed that a U.S. sanctions push at the Security Council would have “adverse consequences” for the entire body.
If the Iran nuclear deal was lying comatose last week, it’s closer to death’s door after Thursday’s shenanigans in New York. I use the term “shenanigans” because the U.S. is claiming to remain a party to the nuclear deal after it very publicly withdrew from the deal in May 2018. Trump dreamed of killing the deal before he even stepped foot on the White House grounds for his first day on the job. The administration’s legal rationale (that the U.S. can invoke snapback sanctions because it was an original member of the deal) reveals its shortsightedness: If they wanted to invoke snapback sanctions through the nuclear deal in 2020, they probably shouldn’t have left the deal in 2018.
More concerning than Washington’s legal arguments, however, is its actual policy on Iran. The Trump administration is a big believer in the power of economic sanctions. The Treasury Department issues travel bans and asset freezes on individuals, firms, and conglomerates on a weekly basis for a range of nefarious behavior. Iran is typically items one, two, and three for Treasury’s “to-do’” list. Every industry short of Iranian pistachios has been sanctioned by Washington, meaning that any other country that transacts with Iran in any of those industries is liable to be being shut out of the U.S. financial system. The sanctions have obviously had a negative effect on Iran’s bottom line: Tehran’s oil exports have declined by 90% since May 2018.
The architects of the maximum pressure campaign assured themselves that economic pressure would make the ayatollahs cry uncle and compel Tehran to give away the store in a new negotiation. None of it, however, has gone according to plan. The sanctions have become an end in themselves. Bankrupting the Iranian economy is now the objective. Moving Iran’s foreign policy in a more constructive direction has been a failure of immeasurable proportions.
In the grand scheme of things, the administration’s decision to use the snapback procedure is not the real story here. The story, rather, is that the U.S. is willing to degrade its standing at the Security Council, make a mockery of U.S. diplomacy, and spend so much political capital in order to engage in a staring contest with a mid-tier power whose economy is just over the size of Maryland’s and whose air force is as rickety as a few paper airplanes.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
