The United States on Monday will sanction more than two dozen people and entities involved in Iran's nuclear, missile and conventional arms programs, a senior US official said, putting teeth behind UN sanctions on Tehran that Washington argues have resumed despite the opposition of allies and adversaries.
The official said Iran could have enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon by the end of the year and that Tehran has resumed long-range missile cooperation with nuclear-armed North Korea. He did not provide detailed evidence regarding either assertion.
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The new sanctions fit into US President Donald Trump's effort to limit Iran's regional influence and come a week after US-brokered deals for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize ties with Israel, pacts that may coalesce a wider coalition against Iran while appealing to pro-Israel US voters ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
The new sanctions also put European allies, China and Russia on notice that while their inclination may be to ignore the US drive to maintain the UN sanctions on Iran, companies based in their nations would feel the bite for violating them.
A major part of the new US push is an executive order targeting those who buy or sell Iran conventional arms that was previously reported by Reuters and will also be unveiled by the Trump administration on Monday, the official said.
The Trump administration suspects Iran of seeking nuclear weapons - something Tehran denies - and Monday's punitive steps are the latest in a series seeking to stymie Iran's atomic program, which US ally Israel views as an existential threat.
"Iran is clearly doing everything it can to keep in existence a virtual turnkey capability to get back into the weaponization business at a moment's notice should it choose to do so," the US official told Reuters.
The official argued Iran wants a nuclear weapons capability and the means to deliver it despite the 2015 deal that sought to prevent this by restraining Iran's atomic program in return for access to the world market.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has said Iran only began significantly breaching the 2015 deal's limits after the US withdrawal and it is still enriching uranium only up to 4.5%, well below the 20% it had achieved before that agreement, let alone the roughly 90% purity that is considered weapons-grade, suitable for an atomic bomb.
"Iran and North Korea have resumed cooperation on a long-range missile project, including the transfer of critical parts," he added, declining to say when such joint work first began, stopped, and then started again.
Asked to comment on the impending new US sanctions and the US official's other statements, a spokesman for Iran's mission to the United Nations dismissed them as propaganda and said they would further isolate the United States.
"The US' 'maximum pressure' show, which includes new propaganda measures almost every week, has clearly failed miserably, and announcing new measures will not change this fact," the mission's spokesman, Alireza Miryousefi, said.
"The entire world understands that these are a part of (the) next US election campaign, and they are ignoring the US' preposterous claims at the UN today. It will only make (the) US more isolated in world affairs," he said.
Meanwhile, Britain, France and Germany told the UN Security Council on Friday that UN sanctions relief for Iran, as detailed in the 2015 nuclear deal, would continue beyond Sept. 20, when the United States asserts that all the measures should be reimposed.
In a letter to the 15-member body, the three European parties to the nuclear deal and long-time US allies said any decision or action taken to reimpose UN sanctions "would be incapable of legal effect." The United States quit the nuclear deal in 2018.
"We have worked tirelessly to preserve the nuclear agreement and remain committed to do so," said the UN envoys for Britain, France and Germany, adding that they remain committed to "fully implementing" a 2015 Security Council resolution that enshrines the pact, which also included Russia and China.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Saturday he cannot take any action on a US declaration that all UN sanctions on Iran had been reimposed because "there would appear to be uncertainty" on the issue.
But 13 of the 15 Security Council members say Washington's move is void because Pompeo used a mechanism agreed under a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, which the United States quit in 2018.
"There would appear to be uncertainty whether or not the process ... was indeed initiated and concomitantly whether or not the (sanctions) terminations ... continue in effect," Guterres wrote in a letter to the council, seen by Reuters.
"It is not for the Secretary-General to proceed as if no such uncertainty exists," he said.
Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy responded on Twitter, "We all clearly said in August that US claims to trigger snapback are illegitimate. Is Washington deaf?"
Iran's UN Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi said on Twitter on Saturday, "US illegal and false 'deadline' has come and gone ... Swimming against international currents will only bring it more isolation."
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