Six Arab nations are urging the United Nations to extend an arms embargo on Iran, siding with the United States in a dispute that could end the 2015 nuclear deal.
“Iran has continued to proliferate conventional weapons and arm terrorist and sectarian organizations and movements throughout the region,” the Gulf Cooperation Council said in a bulletin announcing that a letter was sent Saturday to the U.N. “It is imperative to extend those restrictions to ensure and preserve peace and stability in this region and the rest of the world.”
That argument echoes the oft-repeated warnings made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s team, as U.S. officials have tried to convince Russia and China to allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution extending the embargo before it lapses in October. The letter, a rare show of unity for a GCC that has been riven by a major diplomatic split between Qatar and the Saudi Arabian wing of the coalition, dovetails with American warnings that Russia and China might anger Middle Eastern nations if they persist in their support for Iran.
“Iran has not ceased or desisted from armed interventions in neighboring countries, directly and through organizations and movements armed and trained by Iran,” the GCC said. “As such, it is inappropriate to lift the restrictions on conventional weapons’ movement to and from Iran until it abandons its destabilizing activities in the region and ceases to provide weapons to terrorist and sectarian organizations.”
Tehran rejected the statement, as Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi denounced the Gulf bloc as “the mouthpiece of anti-Iran elements.” The statement was released in advance of this week’s expected U.S. effort to pass a resolution extending the arms embargo.
“The arms embargos are rather a threat to the UNSC and its legal mechanism than a threat against the Iranian nation and against us,” Mousavi said Monday. “The Americans want to weaken or annihilate the UNSC by using it instrumentally or take control of it.”
Russia and China are expected to block the extension of the arms embargo, which was scheduled to expire when the 2015 Iran nuclear deal came into force. The connection between the nuclear accord and the arms embargo expiration means that the Pompeo can renew the embargo unilaterally by invoking the provision of the nuclear deal that allows the U.S. to abrogate the entire agreement and renew all the preexisting restrictions.
“The Security Council’s mission is to maintain ‘international peace and security.’ The Council would make an absolute mockery of that mission if it allowed the number-one state sponsor of terrorism to buy and sell weapons freely,” Pompeo said last week. “One way or another — one way or another, we will do the right thing. We will ensure that the arms embargo is extended.”
