UN Security Council to take up Russia and China’s last-ditch effort to delay sanctions on Iran

UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Russia and China are forcing the U.N. Security Council to vote Friday on a resolution that would give Iran a six-month extension before sanctions related to its nuclear program are reimposed.

The last-ditch effort by Iran’s few and closest allies is unlikely to garner enough support to pass the 15-member council. It comes a day before a series of U.N. sanctions are set to take effect as outlined in Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. That would again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalize any development of Iran’s ballistic missile program, among other measures, further squeezing the country’s reeling economy.

Britain, Germany and France, known as the E3, triggered the so-called “snapback” mechanism last month after accusing Tehran of failing to comply with the conditions of the accord and when weeks of high-level negotiations failed to reach a diplomatic resolution.

Since the 30-day clock began, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has been meeting with his French, British and German counterparts to strike a last-minute deal, leading up to this week’s U.N. General Assembly gathering. But those talks appeared futile, with one European diplomat telling the Associated Press on Wednesday that the most recent talks “did not produce any new developments, any new results.”

Therefore, European sources “expect that the snapback procedure will continue as planned.”

Even before Araghchi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in New York for the annual gathering this week, remarks from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that peace tals with the U.S. represent “a sheer dead end” constrained any eleventh-hour diplomatic efforts from taking place.

Iranian officials have defended their position over the last several weeks, saying that they’ve put forward “multiple proposals to keep the window for diplomacy open.” On Friday, Araghchi said in a social media post that “the E3 has failed to reciprocate” efforts, “while the U.S. has doubled down on its dictates.” He urged the Security Council to vote in favor of an extension to provide the “time and space for diplomacy.”

European nations have said they would be willing to extend the deadline if Iran complies with a series o conditions. Those include resumption of direct negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program, allowing U.N. nuclear inspectors access to its nuclear sites, and accounts for the more than 400 kilograms (880 pounds) of highly enriched uranium the U.N. watchdog says it has.

Of all the nations in the world that don’t have nuclear weapons programs, Iran is the only nation in the world that enriches uranium up to 60% – a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels.

Earlier this month, the U.N. nuclear watchdog and Iran signed an agreement mediated by Egypt to pave the way for resuming cooperation, including on ways of relaunching inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities. However, Iran has threatened to terminate that agreement and cut all cooperation with the IAEA should U.N. sanctions be reimposed.

Iran has been wary of giving full access to inspectors following the 12-day war with Israel in June that saw both the Israelis and the Americans bomb Iranian nuclear sites, throwing into question the status of Tehran’s stockpile of uranium enriched nearly to weapons-grade levels.

But a diplomat close to the IAEA confirmed on Friday that inspectors are currently in Iran where they are inspecting a second undamaged site, and will not leave the country ahead of the expected reimposition of sanctions this weekend. IAEA inspectors earlier watched a fuel replacement at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on Aug. 27 and 28.

The Europeans have said this alone is not enough to halt the sanctions from coming into place Saturday.

The move is expected to heighten already magnified tensions between Iran and the West. It’s unclear how Iran will respond, given that in the past, officials have threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, potentially following North Korea, which abandoned the treaty in 2003 and then built atomic weapons.

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Liechtenstein reported from Vienna. Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates contributed to this report.