Iranian President Hassan Rouhani anticipated "America's defeat" at the upcoming United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting next weekend, preemptively speaking about Iran's "victory over the U.S."
In an address to a cabinet session on Wednesday, Rouhani predicted that "the U.S. government is going to suffer another defeat" at the UNSC after the nation's recent failure to extend the U.N. arms embargo on Iran, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)-affiliated news agency, Tasnim, reported.
Rouhani said that Washington would fail to activate the "trigger mechanism" against Tehran at the UNSC's next session, a function that allows the signees of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal to request the automatic return of all international sanctions against Iran, should Iran violate its commitments stipulated in the nuclear agreement.
Although Washington withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, the nation's leaders have repeatedly argued that they can still request the trigger mechanism be activated, and attempted to restore sanctions against Iran last month.
The UNSC is scheduled to decide on the case next weekend.
After the UNSC failed to reimpose the international sanctions on Iran, the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced on August 27 that the United States had already begun a thirty-day process of restoring all U.N. sanctions against Iran via the snapback mechanism, and all sanctions would be reinstated from September 20 onward.
In response, Iran, along with Russia and China, argued that the U.S. had previously exited the JCPOA, and, therefore the nation has no right to present such demands. Britain, France, and Germany, the European parties in the JCPOA, are also struggling to keep the agreement alive and tackle Iran's disputes in its framework.
After extending the JCPOA four times during the last two years of Barack Obama's and the first two years of Donald Trump's presidency, the White House withdrew from the nuclear treaty in May 2018, subsequently reimposing sanctions on Iran.
Niger's permanent envoy to the U.N., currently serving as the U.N.'s rotating president of the UNSC, has not yet commented on the case.