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Snapback sanctions: Iran seeks Lanka’s help to counter “challenge” to international legal order
View(s):Iran is seeking Sri Lanka’s support to resist moves by the United States and the E3 – Britain, France, and Germany – to upend the international legal order, as the Islamic Republic has been slapped with sweeping sanctions connected to its nuclear programme ten years after they were lifted.
Addressing a select group of journalists in Colombo, Iranian ambassador Dr Alireza Delkhosh said that in a letter sent to Sri Lanka’s foreign minister Vijitha Herath, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi highlighted the illegality of the re-imposition of the sanctions and alerted Sri Lanka to the bad precedent the E3 was setting.
With Iran signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with six world powers in 2015, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 22/31, lifting the sanctions on Iran. But in August, Britain, France, and Germany announced the re-imposition of the sanctions at the Security Council meeting, accusing Iran of non-compliance with the JCPOA agreement. The sanctions came into force last Saturday.
The Iranian foreign minister’s letter points out that the reactivation of the sanctions annulled by a UN resolution is legally baseless and unjustifiable. He calls on Sri Lanka to express its concern over the E3’s move to undermine the widely recognized international law principles.
The ambassador said that although the so-called snapback sanctions were against international law principles and the United Nations Charter, the Western powers arbitrarily bent the law to re-impose the sanctions amid opposition from Russia, China, and several other UN members.
Ahead of the re-imposition of the sanctions, Iran reached an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to allow UN inspectors to resume their work at Iranian nuclear sites.
Russia, meanwhile, said it would not enforce the sanctions and was considering them invalid.
Iran and six world powers – the US, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany – signed the JCPOA in 2015, giving the IAEA unrestricted access to Iranian nuclear sites and limiting Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 3 percent. But in 2018, US President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the agreement.
Western powers say Iran has increased enrichment to 60 percent. Israel and the US launched a war on Iran, targeting mainly its nuclear facilities in June this year.
Dr. Delkhosh said if Sri Lanka and other countries did not resist the usurpation of international law by one single country, the United States, what happened to Iran could happen to Sri Lanka or any other country.
The ambassador said the illegal re-imposition of snapback sanctions applied only to trade related to Iran’s nuclear programme and therefore had little impact on Iran’s economy. He said Iran had gone through a similar phase prior to 2015 and would be resilient enough to overcome the challenge.
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