17 September 2020
The US has sought unilaterally to re-introduce sanctions against Iran in August but has been ‘simply ignored’, Marc Weller, Professor of International Law at Cambridge University, writes in NLJ this week
The Iran nuclear deal of 2015―called the ‘worst deal ever’ by Donald Trump―committed Tehran to abandoning its reputed nuclear weapons programme. However, parties could bring the sanctions back into operation through a unilateral claim of significant non-compliance to the UN Security Council. The US did this but was ignored.
‘If this position is maintained, this would represent an unprecedented defeat for the Trump administration,’ Weller says.
‘After the extensive period of US hostility to multilateralism, multilateralism has bitten back, it seems.’
Weller outlines how he believes the US bungled the Iran sanctions snapback, and looks at the ‘emerging and increasingly serious pattern of non-compliance’.
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