Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday called on all U.N. members to observe the golden rule and called attempts by Europe to reinstate sanctions paused under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action illegal.
Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Mr. Pezeshkian accused Israel and the U.S. of flagrantly violating international law in their war with Iran in June and creating unnecessary suffering in the Middle East.
“My country was subjected to a savage aggression in flagrant contravention of the most elementary principles of international law, the aerial assaults of the Zionist regime and the United States of America against Iran’s cities, homes and infrastructures, precisely at a time when we were treading the path of diplomatic negotiations constituted a grave betrayal of diplomacy,” he said.
Israel bombed Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists in June. The strikes kicked off a 12-day war that saw Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure crippled. The U.S. eventually sent B-2 bombers to wipe out Iran’s most heavily fortified uranium enrichment facilities.
Both Israel and the U.S. have maintained that the strikes were necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Several international watchdog organizations have found that Iran has rapidly increased its level of uranium enrichment since 2018.
In early June, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors found the Islamic Republic in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Mr. Pezeshkian’s speech comes as Iran tries to avoid the reimposition of U.N. Security Council-backed sanctions, originally halted under the JCPOA in 2015 in exchange for limits to Iran’s nuclear program.
Following Iran’s decision to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, leaders from the E3 — France, Germany and the U.K. — triggered the snapback mechanism of the JCPOA, which would reinstate the sanctions after 30 days.
The snapback sanctions include an arms embargo, travel limitations on Iranian officials and asset seizures.
During his speech, Mr. Pezeshkian called the decision by Europe to trigger the snapback mechanism illegal and declared that Iran isn’t seeking nuclear weapons.
“They falsely presented themselves as parties of good standing to the agreement, and they disparaged Iran’s sincere efforts as insufficient. All of this was in pursuit of nothing less than the destruction of the very JCPOA which they themselves had once held as the foremost achievement of multilateral diplomacy,” he said.
The deadline for snapback sanctions is Sunday, and Iranian diplomats have used this week’s U.N. meeting to try to broker an agreement that would avoid the sanctions. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with his European counterparts on Tuesday, yet no deal surfaced.
Experts are doubtful that Iran and Europe will reach an agreement before the deadline. While Iran has agreed to restart its cooperation with the IAEA, it has failed to make progress on Europe’s other demands, namely that Tehran restart negotiations with the U.S. and provide transparency over its stockpiles of enriched uranium.
