The extent of US isolation at the UN has been fueled at home by formal letters from 13 of the 15 Security Council members trying against the Trump administration to extend the economic embargo on Iran.
The councilors’ letters have all been issued in the 24 hours since US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived at the UN headquarters in New York to declare Iran a failure to comply with a 2015 nuclear deal.
Under that deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), extensive UN sanctions on Iran would be restored 30 days after the declaration. But almost all other councilors have issued letters saying the US is incapable of triggering these “snapback” sanctions because it left the JCPOA in May 2018.
The US has said it is still technically a participant as it is mentioned as one in a 2015 Security Council resolution of 2015 endorsing the JCPOA. The argument was rejected by France, the United Kingdom and Germany even before Pompeo made his statement.
Since then, Reuters has reported that it has seen letters from Russia, China, Germany, Belgium, Vietnam, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Indonesia, Estonia and Tunisia, all of which reject the US position.
Only the Dominican Republic has yet to issue a formal letter on the subject. Last week, the Caribbean state was the only member of the Security Council to support the United States when it sought to extend an arms embargo on Iran. Pompeo visited the island two days after that vote.
Councilors who typically see themselves as U.S. allies on most issues said they would have supported Washington if a compromise had been reached in which the arms embargo could be extended for a limited period. The defeat of the US resolution on the embargo led directly to Pompeo’s legal gambit to try to snap back the UN sanctions.
UN diplomats say the depth of US isolation was partly a reflection of the abrasive style used by Pompeo, who accused Europeans of ‘choosing with’ the ayatollahs’, and the US Ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, a political nominee.
“The Americans were actually over the top in their ridiculousness,” one diplomat said.
“The underlying point here is that most countries on the Security Council agree in principle with the US that Iran is not a nice country and that having nuclear weapons and more weapons is not a good thing,” the diplomat said. “But the Americans have misplayed their hand so often, so aggressively, that they isolate themselves from people not on policy, but by simply being unpleasant.”
