US push to refer Iran’s nuclear case to UN signals strategic confusion
By Delaram Ahmadi
Staff writer
The United States, along with Britain, France and Germany, is seeking to have the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors adopt a resolution next week referring Iran’s nuclear case to the UN Security Council for the first time in 20 years. Following two aggressions against Iran in 2025 and 2026, the US has claimed that the country’s nuclear facilities were completely destroyed. Against this backdrop, it is unclear what Washington hopes to achieve by pushing ahead with such moves at international bodies. Omid Khazani, an international affairs analyst, told Iran Daily that the moves reflect strategic confusion within the Trump administration, driven by flawed assumptions, and that even if they go ahead, they are unlikely to have any tangible impact on Iran’s current situation.
IRAN DAILY: How feasible is this course of action by the US and the three European states? If it goes ahead, what would be the most important consequences of each of these two measures for the Islamic Republic of Iran?
KHAZANI: There is a very high possibility that the Board of Governors, which is under the influence of the United States and European countries, will adopt the resolution and send it on to the Security Council. But the chances of the Security Council imposing specific sanctions on Iran are very low, given that Russia and China are highly likely to veto any such measure.
Even assuming that the Board of Governors adopts the resolution and a new measure is also adopted at the UN, there will be no sanctions different from what the snapback mechanism could have imposed. The snapback itself did not bring about any tangible change, because when a country is already under severe US sanctions, nothing fundamentally new is going to happen. The snapback proved this. In fact, once something has been sanctioned, it cannot be sanctioned again.
As for why Europe is going along with the United States, it is because European countries see these measures as the least costly way to portray themselves as aligned with Washington. If they had wanted to provide serious support to the United States, they would have joined the war against Iran, which they did not.
If Iran’s case is referred to the Security Council, can Russia and China be expected to use their veto power to block a resolution against Iran?
Thirteen years ago, China was not as powerful as it is today, and Russia was not facing a crisis it is facing today due to the Ukraine war. At that time, their interests dictated that they go along with the international community, even against Iran. Therefore, there is roughly a more than 95% chance that Russia and China will veto the Europeans’ new move against Iran, because Russia is now at odds with Europe and the United States. Iran’s isolation and defeat would, in a sense, also amount to Russia’s defeat in the Ukraine war.
China’s interests also make it unlikely to align with the United States on this issue, because China’s interests lie in a multipolar world. The Chinese certainly view a unipolar world led by the United States as being against their interests.
Moreover, in 2026, after and with the United States’ unvarnished image in today’s world, where wars and sanctions have thrown the international system into turmoil, the Global South is pursuing the dismantling of the unipolar order much more seriously. These countries are seeking to challenge this unipolar world, which is a world of lawlessness and bullying.
As a result, Russia and China are guided primarily by their own national interests, which leave little room for cooperation with the United States on this issue. At the same time, their efforts to strengthen the Global South and promote a multipolar world would make it harder for this new US strategy to succeed.
The United States claims that its recent attacks severely damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities. What, then, is Washington seeking to achieve by pursuing this issue through the IAEA and the UN Security Council?
This contradiction is precisely the result of the strategic confusion surrounding Donald Trump and his administration. In June 2025, and even in January 2026, an agreement similar to the JCPOA (2015 nuclear deal), and perhaps even better, was completely within reach. The United States and President Trump fell into [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s trap. With the narcissistic personality he had, he was seeking a quick and short victory in Iran, and this was based on false assumptions.
Those false assumptions were that the Iranian military and the Iranian government would collapse after a four- or five-day war and as a result of several missiles being fired at Tehran. None of the previous US presidents had fallen into Netanyahu’s trap. But Trump did, and that became a turning point that paved the way for subsequent mistakes.
The nuclear case, which could have been resolved in February 2026 and even in June 2025 through an agreement similar to the JCPOA, instead turned into an escalating crisis because of these false assumptions. An “escalation ladder,” so to speak, was created, and the United States became trapped in it.
Not only were Trump and his administration unable to resolve Iran’s nuclear issue, but a new crisis at the Strait of Hormuz was also added to the equation. Such moves at the UN Security Council will not produce any new outcome, because if you pursue 10 different approaches based on the same false assumption, they will simply produce the same result.
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