U.N. Security Council member states need to set aside the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers and focus on cracking down on Iran's missile and other non-nuclear transgressions, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said on Monday.
Haley took fellow ambassadors from the Security Council member states on a field trip to Washington and suggested that a concerted global effort to punish Iran for violations of Security Council resolutions on ballistic missiles could persuade U.S. President Donald Trump to keep the nuclear agreement intact.
Trump has previously threatened to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which sought to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions in exchange for lifting sanctions.
Haley said that France, a key member of the group that negotiated the nuclear deal, had recently "started hitting" Iran with criticism for violating ballistic missile resolutions.
Haley tweeted: "We brought the Security Council to D.C. to see first-hand evidence from the Department of Defense of Iran's illegal weapons program. These violations cannot continue."
The tweet included Defense Department photos of weapons stamped "Made in Iran."
"It's working," Haley said after meeting with Trump and the other ambassadors.
"They [the Secutiry Council members] are starting to realize, 'If we don't start talking about the violations, if we don't call them out, then the U.S. is going to say this whole thing is a sham.'"
With little hope of renegotiating the nuclear deal, Trump's administration has instead been looking to add stipulations to the U.S. law on the deal so that sanctions, waived as part of the deal, can be reimposed if Iran presses forward with non-nuclear activity deemed unacceptable by the U.S.
China and Russia, two Security Council members that helped negotiate the nuclear deal, have been particularly reluctant to impose additional conditions on Iran, and have cast doubt on U.S. allegations that Iran is funneling weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been using those weapons against U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia. Haley said that skepticism came across as these countries' ambassadors viewed the missile parts on display in Washington.
"The Chinese just took notes. The Russians questioned the missiles, how they got to Yemen," Haley said.
"How do you dispute this?" Haley asked the Russians. "It's got 'Made in Iran' welded on it," she said, showing the markings on the missiles.
During the one-day visit, Haley and national security adviser H.R. McMaster took the ambassadors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and to lunch at the White House with Trump. At the lunch, discussions focused on hot-button issues such as Syria, North Korea, and terrorism.
Meanwhile, two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, a Russian delegation led by the head of the Russian Federation's Security Council, Nikolai Petrochev, was due to arrive in Jerusalem.
Journalist Barak Ravid reported on Channel 10 News that the delegation will include several high-ranking Russian officials, including the deputy foreign minister, deputy internal security minister, deputy justice minister, as well as generals and other senior military officials.
The delegation is visiting Israel to strengthen bilateral ties.
In his meeting with Putin this week, Netanyahu discussed scenarios of potential regional escalation.
