Return of UN sanctions on Iran is unjust, politically clear blunder
As the clock ran out on UN Security Council Resolution 2231— the measure that endorsed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—on October 18, 2025, Iran, China, and Russia jointly declared that all restrictions tied to Iran’s nuclear program had officially expired and that previous UN resolutions had been terminated.
In a joint letter to the Security Council’s president and the UN secretary-general, the three countries stressed that, under paragraph 8 of Resolution 2231, “all provisions” of the resolution had expired as of that date, marking the “full and timely conclusion” of the council’s consideration of Iran’s nuclear file. Paragraph 8 set a ten-year transitional period from the resolution’s adoption, after which all provisions would cease to apply and the “non-proliferation (Iran)” item would be removed from the council’s agenda.
Two additional provisions also play a pivotal role in an ongoing legal debate: paragraph 7(a), which annulled previous Security Council resolutions on Iran from the “implementation day” of the JCPOA, and paragraph 12, which established the so-called “snapback” mechanism—allowing for the automatic reinstatement of prior resolutions should any party claim “significant non-performance” by another. The main dispute now centers on a key legal question: Can the snapback mechanism remain valid after Resolution 2231 has expired?
In August, the European trio—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—triggered the snapback process by invoking the dispute settlement mechanism, claiming that the previously canceled UN sanctions had been reinstated. Their move has deepened legal confusion and exposed a widening rift over how the Security Council interprets the status of the JCPOA and Resolution 2231.
Peter Jenkins, a veteran former British diplomat, has examined, from legal and political perspectives, the current divergence in the international community’s interpretation of the JCPOA’s status and the snapback mechanism, as outlined below in an interview with IRNA published in Persian:
The clauses of Resolution 2231 must be understood as a coherent whole. Paragraph 8 defines a ten-year lifespan for the resolution’s full implementation; by the end of that period, all its provisions lapse. Logically, therefore, the snapback clause in paragraph 12 could only have been operative during that ten-year window. Even if any previous resolutions had been reinstated under paragraph 7(a) during that period, the expiration mandated by paragraph 8 would also terminate their effect.
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