Iran has promised to inflict a “decisive response” against the United States for acting like a “bully” to adversaries and allies alike after Washington said it would reimpose UN sanctions — without United Nations’ approval.

In a live televised address on Sunday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, congratulated world powers for resisting U.S. pressure to reinstate UN sanctions, saying the effort “has reached its definitive point of failure.”

This comes after the U.S. broke with all other permanent members of the UN Security Council and unilaterally declared the re-imposition of all UN sanctions against Iran — a claim rejected by Tehran and the international community, including Washington’s close allies, as having no legal basis.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened “consequences” for any UN member state that does not comply with the punitive measures, which were lifted under the Iran nuclear deal signed between six world powers — China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States (and the European Union) — and Iran in 2015. It was abandoned by the U.S. when President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018.

“If UN Member States fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure that Iran does not reap the benefits of UN-prohibited activity,” Pompeo said.

Indications are emerging that instead of applying pressure on the government, the sanctions are incapacitating the daily lives of ordinary Iranian citizens, even those who have left the country years ago and adopted other nationalities. In extreme cases, people have been penalized on account of their surnames that hint of Iranian origins and prevented from purchasing goods online or making money remittances.

Iran in Violation of Nuclear Deal and Menace

Tehran has been in clear violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 — it calls on the Iranian government “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.” Yet most powerful countries of the international community, with the exception of the U.S., has refused to condemn Iran. 

The regime, in fact, has been violating its commitments under the deal since May 2019 with its constant amassing of enriched uranium and spinning more centrifuges. The mullahs threats, however, do not end there. 

As Iran’s Navy chief, Adm. Hossein Khanzadi, bragged on Iranian state tv on June 8, 2020:

“The important point about these missiles is that they are fully equipped with homing. It means they are of the fire-and-forget type. We fire the missile and the data is on the missile itself, it has various navigation systems built in.” 

Iran’s theocratic regime currently possesses the largest and most diverse ballistic missile program in the Middle East. It is worth noting, as president of the International American Council on the Middle East Dr. Majid Rafizadeh reports, “that no country other than Iran has acquired long-range ballistic missiles before obtaining nuclear weapons. While ballistic missiles can be used for either offensive or defensive purposes, the sophisticated missiles are mainly developed as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons.”

The UN and the EU, nevertheless, still remain committed to lifting the arms embargo on Tehran which expire next month, even though the regime has made it clear it wants to annihilate Israel with its ballistic missiles. Such were the words of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, when he spoke to the youth of Iran last year:

“You young people should be assured that you will witness the demise of the enemies of humanity, meaning the degenerate American civilization, and the demise of Israel”.

The Commander-in-Chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, also made the strategy of his regime vehemently clear by stating on Iran State TV Channel 2, 

“Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map. And, it seems that, considering the evil that Israel is doing, it is bringing itself closer to that. Today, more than ever, there is fertile ground – with the grace of Allah — for the annihilation, the wiping out, and the collapse of the Zionist regime. In Lebanon alone, over 100,000 missiles are ready to be launched. If there is a will, if it serves [our] interests, and if the Zionist regime repeats its past mistakes due to its miscalculations, these missiles will pierce through space, and will strike at the heart of the Zionist regime. They will prepare the ground for its great collapse in the new era.”

To view the clip of IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami on MEMRI TV, CLICK BELOW.

Rafizadeh also disclosed how Tehran is reportedly setting up weapons factories abroad and manufacturing advanced ballistic missiles and other weapons. Some of the arms that Tehran is producing include precision-guided missiles, using advanced technology to strike specific targets. Iran’s foreign-based weapons factories give it an advantageous military capability for waging wars or striking other nations through third countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Yemen or Iraq.

Why has the international community, specifically China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom been silent? As is obvious by the evidence, it is not that they cannot stop the regime from doing what it wants, but because they would risk huge capital losses.

France’s trade with Iran grew 118% from January to October 2017, for example, (as compared to the same timeframe from the previous year). The French oil company Total concluded a $4.8 billion deal to develop the world’s largest gas field in Pars (southwest Iran) over the next 20 years. Germany gained $3.5 billion in exports to Iran in 2017. China’s trade with Iran was more than $37 billion in 2017; it exported over $18 billion worth of goods, a growth of 13 percent from the previous year. 

The fact that Iran has not only broken the deal but that it seeks to use its missiles to bombard any country it wishes should compel the international community to annul Iran’s jihadist endeavors. The Islamic Republic of Iran, of course, is the only country in the region that gets a green light to continue to commit atrocities, as Saudi Arabia does in its genocidal war in Yemen. Yet if the theocratic regime continues to go unchecked, it certainly will not help extinguish the fire that has been burning in the Middle East for generations.

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Mario Alexis Portella is a priest of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy. He has a doctorate in canon law and civil law from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome; he also holds a M. A. in Medieval History from Fordham University, as well as a B.A. in Government & Politics from St. John’s University. He is also author of Islam: Religion of Peace? – The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up.

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