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Question: Yesterday, following a vote, the UN Security Council rejected a draft resolution proposed by Russia and China on extending Resolution 2231 on Iran’s nuclear programme for another six months.

What consequences do you foresee from the reinstatement of UN sanctions against Iran? Do you still think that a diplomatic resolution of the Iranian nuclear programme issue is possible? If so, what further steps does Russia plan to take?

Sergey Lavrov: The snapback mechanism was incorporated into UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that approved the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015. The incorporation followed direct talks between Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

This snapback mechanism is not typical for other sanctions regimes. In fact, it authorised any country to submit a resolution for a vote on extending the sanctions. A country with veto power could block such a resolution single-handedly, resulting in the non-extension of the sanctions.

I have two observations here. First, the mechanism lacks elegant formulation and was implemented solely for the purpose of maintaining a hold on our Iranian counterparts’ throats, preventing them from any sort of deviation.

Second, Iran agreed to this “exotic” mechanism solely because it was confident it would never violate the deal. The rationale was, essentially, that they let this mechanism remain in place as a contingency measure. Iran had no intention of violating it then and has no intention of doing so now. Therefore, they agreed to it with a light heart as they saw it at the time.

They could not have imagined that the deal would be torn apart not by them but by the United States in 2018. And yet, it happened. The United States withdrew from the deal and declared that it no longer recognised the resolution. Instead of demanding that the United States reassume its obligations, Europe also began to retreat from its commitment to these agreements. This continuous series of violations is well-documented.

So, from the resolution that the United States does not recognise, the Europeans take only what they need. And what they need is this exotic snapback mechanism. What did they do? It is difficult to explain this in a human language. It is a trap. This paradox was created as a trap for Iran. This is yet another indication that Iran never intended and does not intend to violate the requirements of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons or this nuclear deal. However, Iran’s next government has fallen into this trap inherited from 2015.

Russia and the People’s Republic of China have done everything possible to give diplomacy a chance. Even after the resolution to restore the sanctions regime was adopted, there was still a chance to agree on extending the full implementation of the Iranian nuclear deal for a certain period (we proposed three months) without adding or removing any conditions so that it would remain in effect with all its aspects during a period when, as we hoped, talks would proceed.

Since the West sabotaged this effort and blackmailed the majority of UN Security Council members into supporting its destructive stance, now I don’t know how the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond. This demonstrates a complete inability to negotiate across the board. They did not even give Iran two or three months to negotiate and secure acceptable terms to continue cooperation with both the IAEA and the United States.

Iran was and remains open to dialogue, even if not direct but mediated. Iran has also maintained regular contact with the European Three, yet the outcome of these interactions confirms only one thing: from the very beginning, the European Three needed a pretext to reinstate the sanctions. Consequently, all proposals of a compromise made in good faith by our Iranian counterparts were rejected. Whenever an announcement was made giving hope for an agreement, new demands would emerge by the next morning.

This is a deliberate campaign to initiate another phase of strangling Iran economically, financially and so forth. You consistently say in your reports and political analysts mention that the threats of new strikes against Iran persist and, as some informed sources even indicate, are discussed as options at a practical level, which is also highly indicative. All these actions are synchronised, both the military threat and the measures of economic suffocation. This is regrettable and indicates only one thing: western countries hold UN Security Council resolutions very cheap, as we say in Russia. This is true regarding Iran, Kosovo and the Minsk Agreements on Ukraine. I could give you plenty of examples.

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