Speaking online to the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook United States will continue working to re-instate the arms embargo on Iran and that the sanctions have produced "excellent results" so far.
The sanctions have deprived the Iranian regime of billions of dollars, he said and reiterated that Iran is at the forefront of sponsoring terrorism.
Hook also said the arms embargo would prevent Iran from attacking its neighbors through its proxies and prevent the Islamic Republic from "destabilizing the region".
President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday lashed out at the United States and urged the United Nations Security Council to foil what he called "the U.S. plot for extension of Iran's arms embargo.
“For the sake of the world’s interests and stability, for the sake of the interests that the region and the world have taken into account in the nuclear deal, we expect the four permanent members of the Security Council to stand against such a plot,” he said.
China and Russia are against extending a United Nations arms embargo on Iran which will expire in October as stipulated by the nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in 2015 which the United Nations sanctioned with the Resolution 2231. The United States unilaterally withdrew from the agreement – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – in May 2018.
On Tuesday Josep Borrell, the Foreign Policy Chief of the European Union, said since the United States has already withdrawn from an international agreement curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it can't now use its former membership of the pact to try to impose a permanent arms embargo on the Islamic Republic.
In the webinar with the Heritage Foundation's Brett D. Schaefer, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran also called Iran "an isolated country" with no international support and added that the opposition of Russia and China with lifting the arms embargo was spurred by their wish to sell arms to Iran.
"The Iranian regime is languishing under great pressure and the door is open to diplomacy," he said and added that President Trump will continue to exert pressure on Iran and Iran will have to respond.
