WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday the United States would return to the United Nations to reimpose sanctions on Iran next week and would do all it needed to do to make sure those sanctions are enforced.
Pompeo made the comments in a joint news conference in Washington with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.
Pompeo said last month he had triggered a 30-day process to reimpose all U.N. sanctions on Iran by lodging a complaint with the Security Council accusing Tehran of breaching a 2015 nuclear deal. Pompeo has said sanctions should be reimposed from Sunday.
But 13 of the 15 council members said the U.S. move is void because Washington quit the nuclear deal two years ago and diplomats say few countries are likely to reimpose U.N. sanctions.
“We will return to the United Nations to reimpose sanctions, so that the arms embargo will become permanent next week,” Pompeo said.
“We’ll do all the things we need to do to ensure that those sanctions are enforced,” he added when asked how the United States would achieve that and what it would do to punish countries that do not reimpose the measures.
(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Doina Chiacu and David Brunnstrom in Washington and Michelle Nichols at United Nations; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
