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

The U.N. Security Council on Friday rejected another last-ditch effort to delay the reimposition of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program a day before the deadline and after Western countries claimed that weeks of meetings failed to result in a “concrete” agreement.

The resolution put forth by Russia and China — Iran’s most powerful and closest allies on the 15-member council — failed to garner support from the nine countries required to halt the series of U.N. sanctions from taking effect Saturday, as outlined in Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Barring an eleventh-hour deal, the reinstatement of sanctions — triggered by Britain, France and Germany — will once again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalize any development of Iran’s ballistic missile program, among other measures. That will further squeeze the country’s reeling economy. In an interview Friday afternoon, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called the decision “unfair, unjust and illegal.”

The move is expected to heighten already magnified tensions between Iran and the West. But despite previous threats to withdraw the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Pezeshkian said in an interview with a group of reporters that the country had no intention to do so right now. North Korea, which abandoned the treaty in 2003, went on to build atomic weapons.

Four countries — China, Russia, Pakistan and Algeria — once again supported giving Iran more time to negotiate with the European countries, known as the E3, and the United States, which unilaterally withdrew from the accord with world powers in 2018.

Since the 30-day clock began, Iranian 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 they “did not produce any new developments, any new results.” Therefore, European sources “expect that the snapback procedure will continue as planned.”

European nations have said they would be willing to extend the deadline if Iran complies with a series of 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.

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 action alone is not enough to halt the sanctions from coming into place Saturday.