Tehran (IP) - Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stressed that from a legal point of view, the US is not in a position to use a snapback mechanism and reimpose UN sanctions on Iran.

Iran Press/Iran News: "The United States' three European allies made it clear at a previous UN Security Council meeting that the United States could not use the mechanism," Zarif added

Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters after a cabinet meeting about US efforts to extend arms embargo on Iran at a Security Council meeting that they did their best and traveled to various countries at the highest levels of the State Department, including the Secretary himself, during the Coronavirus outbreak.

Referring to the United States' failure to reach a consensus against Iran, he said: "The Americans have finally come to the conclusion that their resolution will receive less than five votes. Some in New York predicted that the resolution would only get one or two votes. This made America's isolation visible to the world."

Zarif added: "Last week, the Americans distributed the first draft and announced that they will officially release this document on Monday and will vote on it on Tuesday. But yesterday we heard that the voting session was postponed and the first draft was amended and a short resolution was drafted in several paragraphs."

The United States initially prepared a 13-page draft to extend Iran's arms sanctions, but due to the opposition of the Security Council member states, it was forced to change the draft and set the second version in four pages.

According to the JCPOA agreement, the arms embargo on Iran was supposed to end on October 18, 2020. But the United States intends to extend the embargo.

The minister added: "The new draft is insidiously trying to meet the same goals of the first one. Apparently, the United States does not respect the sense of the members of the Security Council and thinks that if they change an article from five pages to five lines, the members of the Security Council think that the content has changed."

"They want to use the Security Council mechanism to destroy the body," he said, noting that the resolution was illegal. This resolution will not be passed and even the number of votes will be very small. Most likely, we will not face a new resolution," Zarif highlighted.

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