US to impose sanctions on anyone involved in Iran's weapons programmes
The US government is set to impose sanctions on over two dozen people and entities involved in Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile and arms programmes as early as Monday.
According to a senior US official who spoke to Reuters, the US unilaterally re-imposed UN-sanctions on Tehran on Sunday through a snapback clause included in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) treaty from which Washington had pulled out in May 2018.
“If UN member states fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure that Iran does not reap the benefits of U.N.-prohibited activity,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a Saturday evening statement.
“Our maximum pressure campaign on the Iranian regime will continue until Iran reaches a comprehensive agreement with us to rein in its proliferation threats and stops spreading chaos, violence, and bloodshed,” Pompeo said, adding that in the coming days the Trump administration “will announce a range of additional measures to strengthen the implementation of UN sanctions and hold violators accountable.”
The unilateral imposition of sanctions come after Pompeo told the 15 members of the UN Security Council last month that the Trump administration would continue its campaign against the development of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.
He also told CNBC at the time that the US was “not going to let them have a nuclear weapon, we’re not going to let them have hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth from selling weapons systems. Every leader around the world knows it’s a bad idea”. He also called Iran the “largest state sponsor of terror".
US tensions with Iran increased after Trump withdrew from the 2015 international agreement that lifted crippling sanctions on Tehran in exchange for a halt in its weapons programs.
These tensions reached boiling point earlier in 2020 when a US strike that killed Iran’s top military commander triggered the regime to further scale back compliance with the international nuclear pact. In January, Iran said it would no longer limit its uranium enrichment capacity or nuclear research.