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We will return to the United Nations to reimpose sanctions on Iran: Pompeo

WION Web Team
Washington, United StatesUpdated: Sep 16, 2020, 11:32 PM IST
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File photo: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Photograph:(Reuters)

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The United States had earlier failed to extend an embargo on conventional arms sales to Iran. Pompeo insisted that "the sanctions are authorized by a valid UN Security Council resolution."

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said today that the Trump administration will "do all the things" to ensure sanctions on Iran are enforced.

"The United States will do what it always does. It will do its share as part of its responsibilities to enable peace, this time in the Middle East," Pompeo said at a  joint news conference with British foreign secretary Dominic Raab.

"We'll do all the things we need to do to make sure that those sanctions are enforced," Pompeo asserted.

However, the United Nations had said earlier said that it cannot proceed with the reimposition of UN sanctions, with 13 of the Security Council's 15 nations objecting to the US move.

The United States had earlier failed to extend an embargo on conventional arms sales to Iran. Pompeo insisted that "the sanctions are authorized by a valid UN Security Council resolution."

"I think we've been very successful despite what the world said would happen if we made the decision the president made rightly back in May of 2018," Pompeo asserted.

"We will return to the United Nations to reimpose sanctions so that the arms embargo will become permanent next week. We believe deeply that this is good for the peoples of all nations," the US secretary of state said.

"There were those who said that American sanctions would not be successful, I think anyone who has stared at the state of the Islamic Republic of Iran's financial situation today, the fact that they can no longer have the resources to underwrite Hezbollah and the Shia militias and all of the places that they have spent money for nefarious activities over all of these years, those resources are greatly reduced," Pompeo added.

The US government had pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal however Pompeo argues that the United States remains a "participant" as it was listed in the 2015 resolution.

Foreign secretary Raab said: "We have always welcomed US and indeed any other efforts to broaden it. The means by which we get there, there may be shades of difference but we have handled them... constructively."