As many as 90% of members of the US House of Representatives have signed a letter calling on the Trump administration to work with US allies in extending the UN arms embargo on Iran, reported Reuters on Thursday, citing congressional sources.
According to the outlet, which saw the letter, at least 382 members signed it, addressed to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, calling on him to work with US allies and partners to extend the embargo, which expires on Oct. 18, along with UN travel restrictions on Iranians associated with arms proliferation.
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"The UN arms embargo is set to expire in October, and we are concerned that the ban's expiration will lead to more states buying and selling weapons to and from Iran," stated the letter, efforts of which are being led by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), the committee's ranking Republican.
Signatures are still being gathered, and the letter has not yet been submitted to the US State Department, congressional aides told Reuters. The number of Republican and Democratic signatures is currently unknown.
The letter comes as Pompeo is reportedly expected to present a legal argument that the United States is still a "participant state" of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration withdrew from in May 2018 in an effort to extend the UN arms embargo on Tehran and institute harsher sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic, which it has since done.
The new strategy comes as the United States has made known a UN Security Council resolution to extend the 2010 arms embargo on Iran – a resolution that is all but guaranteed to fail, as China and Russia would likely each exercise its permanent veto on the council. The Russians have already stated their intention of resuming the trade of arms to the Islamic regime.
If such a resolution does not pass, the United States is expected to unilaterally activate the snapback sanctions under the deal that would include restoring previous UN bans on Iran, which, along with the arms embargo, were lifted under the nuclear deal.
On Thursday, US special representative for Iran Brian Hook reiterated the strategy.
"We can't let the arms embargo expire. It was a mistake to ever put this in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," he said on a conference call for members of the media. "And we have drafted a resolution. It's quite easy to renew the arms embargo, and since the arms embargo has been voted on unanimously in the past, there's a lot of policy precedent to support renewing the arms embargo.
"We have started our diplomacy on this," continued Hook. "We're hopeful that we'll be able to do this in a very clean way through the UN Security Council, but we're also prepared to use every diplomatic option available to us if those efforts are frustrated."
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
