"The clock is ticking". The obvious, as a veiled threat, was made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Twitter on April 18. It illustrates the new obsession of the American administration in the Iranian file: the expiration, in October, of the embargo targeting Iran on conventional weapons. Once again showing its contempt for the allies, Washington is determined to extend this arrangement and to definitively scuttle the attempts by France, Germany and the United Kingdom to save the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA), Iran nuclear agreement signed in 2015. Attempts complicated by the Covid-19 crisis, which prevents official or confidential meetings.
An American resolution renewing the embargo could be presented to the United Nations Security Council in May. The Secretary of State launched a real public campaign on this subject, taking on Europeans. "If we cannot get others to act, the United States is considering all options to achieve it", he said on April 29. In the field, the risk presented by the expiration of the text is however low. "The European embargo remains in effect until 2023, notes a French diplomat. Likewise, the UN embargo on ballistic goods and technology remains in place. "
By pushing for an extension of the embargo, Mr. Pompeo hopes to indirectly create the conditions for an automatic reinstatement of UN sanctions against Iran before the presidential election in November 2020. To this end, he can exploit a legal anomaly hidden in the text of resolution 2231, which followed the signing of the JCPoA. Although withdrawn from the agreement since May 2018, the United States is still cited as a signatory to this resolution, which has not been amended since. They could denounce the Iranian violations of the JCPoA and unilaterally cause the automatic reinstatement ("snapback") of the sanctions. But in doing so, they would also expose themselves to Democratic sarcasm over the abandonment of an agreement that ultimately had virtues, as Senator Elizabeth Warren began to point out.
Finish before the presidential
Mike Pompeo threatens to use this subterfuge if the members of the Security Council obstruct the probable American resolution prolonging the embargo. However, with a veto on the part of Russia and even China, being almost certain, Washington's double-trigger strategy would logically lead to a "snapback", and therefore to the definitive destruction of the Iranian nuclear deal. "Pompeo's goal is to finish the JCPoA before the presidential election", said Richard Johnson, a former member of the US nuclear negotiating team when Barack Obama was president.
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