Pompeo says US to seek all ways to extend Iran arms embargo

Pompeo says US to seek all ways to extend Iran arms embargo

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vows to use all means available to extend a UN arms embargo on Iran, including working through a nuclear accord US President Donald Trump has trashed.

A ban on selling conventional weapons to Iran ends in October under a 2015 Security Council resolution that blessed the denuclearization accord negotiated by former president Barack Obama.

“We’re not going to let that happen,” Pompeo tells a news conference.

“In the event we can’t get anyone else to act, the United States is evaluating every possibility about how we might do that.”

Pompeo says he would ask the UN Security Council to prolong the ban.

Pompeo says that the United States will seek action from Britain, France and Germany — which remain part of the nuclear accord.

But the US allies are critical of the US approach, saying that Europe still has a ban on arms exports to Iran and that the nuclear issue is more important.

Pompeo confirms that the United States was ready to argue that it is itself a participant because it is listed as one in the resolution from 2015, even though Trump has repeatedly said that Washington has bolted the “worst deal ever” after he took over.

“There’s nothing magic about this,” Pompeo says.

“It’s unambiguous, and the rights that accrue to participants of the UN Security Council resolution are fully available to all those participants,” he says.

“We’re going to make sure that come October of this year, the Iranians aren’t able to buy conventional weapons that they would be, given what president Obama and vice president Biden have delivered to the world in that terrible deal.”

— AFP