Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged the United States to lift or waive its sanctions against Iran’s oil sector to resume the US-abandoned Iran nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

UN Political Affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council on Monday that the Secretary-General still considers that the JCPOA represents the best available option to resolve disputes over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Guterres has underscored that the US will also need to lift or waive its sanctions and extend waivers regarding the trade in oil with Iran, for the deal to resume, she added.

DiCarlo said the adoption of the JCPOA just over eight years ago was rightly and universally hailed as a historic breakthrough. Today, the hope the deal engendered has greatly diminished.

She pledged the UN would continue to urge the participants to exercise maximum restraint and to exhaust all available diplomatic avenues to restore the JCPOA. Indeed, the participants are responsible for its fate.

DiCarlo further argued that the deal’s success or failure, especially at this extremely dangerous juncture in global peace and security, matters to all of us.

She also urged Iran to reverse the steps it has taken in response to the US’s violation of its commitments under the deal.

In May 2019, a year after the US unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, Iran started to take remedial measures by reducing its commitments as per the deal after the European parties to the deal - France, Germany and Britain - failed to fulfill their commitments by confronting the US’s unilateral sanctions.

Tehran began to gradually remove a cap set in the JCPOA on its nuclear activities at bi-monthly intervals. At the time, Iran also maintained that if the Iranian economy was shielded from sanctions, it would reverse its nuclear decision.

‘Iran, Russia have not violated Resolution 2231’

Meanwhile, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said Moscow and Tehran have not supplied each other with military equipment in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorsed the JCPOA, as claimed by the US and its Western allies.

He was responding to claims that Iran has provided Russia with drones for use in the Ukraine war, which both countries have repeatedly denied.

There were and could not be any deliveries in circumvention of the requirements of Security Council Resolution 2231. No credible evidence to the contrary was provided, nor was there any evidence that the debris presented by the Americans and the British was collected in Ukraine, he said.

The allegations first emerged in July 2022, when US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan alleged that Washington had received information indicating that the Islamic Republic was preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred drones, including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline for use in the war.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Nebenzya noted that Iran’s return to compliance with the provisions of the JCPOA on its nuclear program is possible only with the appropriate steps from Western countries.

We must not forget that Iran’s return to carrying out its suspended voluntary responsibilities to limit its nuclear energy program will need coordinated moves by the Western parties in the deal and the United States, whose activities have contributed to the current predicament, Nebenzya said.

He emphasized that Russia believes there is no alternative to the JCPOA, and that restarting the deal is necessary for international security.