Even as Washington, Europe Vow To Pressure Iran, Its Foreign Minister Is Heading to New York

Following Iran’s attack on Israel, Secretary Yellen is vowing new sanctions against Tehran and European foreign ministers are due at Jerusalem to convince Israelis to let diplomacy take its course. Yet with the Department of State granting a New York visa to Iran’s foreign minister, a much-promised global pressure campaign may prove insufficient to alter the Islamic Republic’s policies. “Treasury will not hesitate to work with our allies to use our sanctions authority to continue disrupting the Iranian regime’s malign and destabilizing activity,” Ms. Yellen said Tuesday at Washington ahead of the spring meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. She said decisions will be made soon, but did not specify what new sanctions are being considered.The foreign ministers of Germany and Britain, Annalena Baerbock and David Cameron, are scheduled to arrive at Jerusalem Wednesday on what is described as a solidarity tour with Israel following the weekend’s Iranian attack. They will reportedly try to convince Israel to tone down its expected military response, to allow a global anti-Iran coalition to devise pressure plans. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council is scheduled to convene Thursday for a meeting on the Mideast, during which the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, is expected to make an anti-Israel speech. Mr. Abdollahian is a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Yet, the state department approved his New York visit. The visit “proves how rogue states and dictators can exploit the UN structure to whitewash their crimes,” Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, tells the Sun, comparing it to “Hitler’s foreign minister addressing the stability of Europe” during World War II. “Whether or not Abdollahian gets a visa, he still gets $10 billion,” a former White House director of countering Iran’s weapons of mass destruction, Richard Goldberg, tells the Sun. He is referring to a March sanction waiver by President Biden that allowed Tehran to gain access to that sum. With the waiver intact even after the weekend’s unprecedented attack on Israel, “I find it hard to believe Biden is contemplating serious sanctions,” Mr. Goldberg says. To exert serious economic and diplomatic pressures on Iran, he adds, Mr. Biden and his European partners must lock down the $10 billion, enforce existing oil sanctions, and pull the trigger on the “snap back” mechanism at the UN. The latter move would re-impose the tough international restrictions on Iran that were eased after the 2015 nuclear deal was reached.Each of that deal’s signatories — America, Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany — could unilaterally snap back the Security Council’s resolution that legitimized the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. International sanctions on the export and import of the type of drones and missiles that Iran launched at Israel Sunday, for one, would then automatically be reimposed. Several diplomats, though, tell the Sun that no one at London, Paris, or Berlin seriously is considering imposing the snapback option. President Trump walked out of the nuclear deal in 2018, and his attempt to use that option was rejected by the Security Council.America and its European partners’ promises of a coordinated effort to isolate Iran on the world stage, meanwhile, are clouded by the arrival of Mr. Abdollahian at New York. He is due to participate in a Thursday UN Security Council session on the “Middle East and the Palestinian question,” a monthly debate in which Israel is isolated more than any of the other UN members. “We take our obligations as the host of the United Nations very seriously,” the state department’s spokesman, Matthew Miller, said when asked about granting Mr. Abdollahian visa. He referred to the 1947 host-nation treaty that placed the UN headquarters in America, and obliged it to allow access to foreign officials who wish to participate in UN activities. Yet, Congress has determined that some diplomats can be barred from entry for security, terrorism, and foreign policy reasons. That law has been used several times in the past. In 2014 President Obama denied entry to an Iranian UN nominee, Hamid Aboutalebi.Mr. Abdollahian, in contrast, has visited New York twice since October 7, even as he is a card-carrying member of the IRGC, which is designated by the state department as a terrorist organization. By failing to deny him entry even after Iran’s attack, Washington seems to prefer fulfilling its obligations to the UN more than abiding by America’s laws. At the same time, during their visit to Israel Wednesday, Ms. Baerbock and Mr. Cameron might be asked why neither the European Union nor Britain list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. London, for one, has shied from doing so despite IRGC assassination attempts on British soil. Mr. Goldberg, who is now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says the sanctions that Washington and the Europeans are considering would likely impose restrictions on companies linked to the Islamic Republic’s missile and drone industries. To date, such sanctions have failed to achieve much. Instead, promises of world pressure on Iran seem geared toward pushing Israel to soften its planned response to the Iranian attack. Further escalation with Iran is “not in the interests of either America or Israel,” Secretary Blinken reportedly told Jewish American leaders Tuesday.

Even as Washington, Europe Vow To Pressure Iran, Its Foreign Minister Is Heading to New York

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