Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.
Iranwire – Abbas Araghchi, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, along with Wang Yi and Sergey Lavrov, the foreign ministers of China and Russia, sent a joint letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres rejecting efforts by three European powers to trigger the UN’s “snapback” sanctions mechanism.
In their letter, the foreign ministers of the three countries said the move by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom was “legally and procedurally flawed” and “abuses the authority and responsibilities of the UN Security Council.”
They argued that the European countries had ignored the dispute-resolution process outlined in paragraph 36 of the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.
“The Security Council cannot act on the basis of a report by the three European countries and must consider it null and void,” the letter said.
The letter further accused France, Germany, and the United Kingdom of “abusing the power and function of the Security Council,” and urged them to “abandon their destructive path and refrain from any action that deepens divisions.”
On September 1, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi published the full text of the letter on his account on the social network X.
In his post, he called the European decision to automatically reinstate sanctions at the Security Council “a betrayal of the council’s mission” that turns it into “a tool of pressure, not a guardian of global stability.”
Araghchi emphasized in his post, “The United States was the first to violate both the JCPOA and UN Resolution 2231, and subsequently, Europe, instead of fulfilling its commitments, decided to align with illegal sanctions.”
“These undeniable facts,” he wrote, “must be the framework of any serious discussion at the Security Council.”
He described the European attempt to invoke the snapback mechanism as “legally baseless” and “politically destructive,” adding that the Security Council’s primary duty is “to preserve international peace and security,” but “what the three European countries are proposing is a betrayal of this mission and turns the council into a tool of coercion.”
