Intel: Key Biden adviser slams ‘sheer hypocrisy’ of Trump gambit to extend Iran arms embargo

Apr 28, 2020

The Joe Biden campaign’s chief foreign policy adviser slammed the Donald Trump administration for relying on a mechanism in the 2015 nuclear deal to reinstate multilateral sanctions on Iran should the United Nations fail to extend an arms embargo on Tehran, which is set to expire in October.

“It’s hard not to almost admire the sheer hypocrisy of the action that the administration is trying to take in seeking to, in effect, force countries at the Security Council to find a way to extend the arms embargo on Iran,” said Tony Blinken, the campaign’s chief foreign policy adviser, on a virtual panel today hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

Why it matters: Blinken, who helped lead the Iran deal negotiations under President Barack Obama, noted that the United States managed to extend the UN arms embargo as part of the accord, which Trump withdrew from in 2018. Nonetheless, the Trump administration is still threatening to use a mechanism that allows the deal’s signatories to force a snapback of multilateral Iran sanctions at the United Nations unless Europe, Russia and China agree to extend the arms embargo.  

“If you have a veto on the Security Council, this is what we designed into the Iran nuclear agreement, you can in effect unilaterally get that [snapback sanctions] done,” said Blinken. “They’re trying to use this provision in the [nuclear deal] to require the extension of the arms embargo. The only problem is we are no longer participating in the agreement.”

It remains unclear whether the United States can force a snapback of multilateral Iran sanctions given its stated withdrawal from the accord.