UN Security Council to take up Russia, China's last-ditch effort to delay sanctions on Iran

Iranian officials have defended their position over the last several weeks, saying that they've put forward “multiple proposals to keep the window for diplomacy open."

Russia and China are forcing the UN Security Council to vote Friday on a resolution that would give Iran a six-month extension before sanctions related to its nuclear programme are reimposed.

The last-ditch effort by Iran's few and closest allies is unlikely to garner enough support to pass the 15-member council. It comes a day before a series of UN sanctions are set to take effect as outlined in Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

That would again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalise any development of Iran's ballistic missile programme, among other measures, further squeezing the country's reeling economy.

Britain, Germany and France, known as the E3, triggered the so-called “snapback” mechanism last month after accusing Tehran of failing to comply with the conditions of the accord and when weeks of high-level negotiations failed to reach a diplomatic resolution.

Since the 30-day clock began, Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has been meeting with his French, British and German counterparts to strike a last-minute deal, leading up to this week's UN General Assembly gathering. But those talks appeared futile, with one European diplomat telling the Associated Press on Wednesday that the most recent talks “did not produce any new developments, any new results.” Therefore, European sources “expect that the snapback procedure will continue as planned.” Even before Araghchi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in New York for the annual gathering this week, remarks from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that peace talks with the US represent “a sheer dead end” constrained any eleventh-hour diplomatic efforts from taking place.

Iranian officials have defended their position over the last several weeks, saying that they've put forward “multiple proposals to keep the window for diplomacy open." On Friday, Araghchi said in a social media post that “the E3 has failed to reciprocate" efforts, "while the US has doubled down on its dictates.” He urged the Security Council to vote in favour of an extension to provide the “time and space for diplomacy.” European nations have said they would be willing to extend the deadline if Iran complies with a series of conditions. Those include resumption of direct negotiations with the US over its nuclear programme, allowing UN nuclear inspectors access to its nuclear sites, and accounts for the more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium the UN watchdog says it has.

Of all the nations in the world that don't have nuclear weapons programmes, Iran is the only nation in the world that enriches uranium up to 60 per cent — a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels.

Earlier this month, the UN nuclear watchdog and Iran signed an agreement mediated by Egypt to pave the way for resuming cooperation, including on ways of relaunching inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities. However, that agreement has yet to fully take hold.

Iran has been wary of giving full access to inspectors following the 12-day war with Israel in June that saw both the Israelis and the Americans bomb Iranian nuclear sites, throwing into question the status of Tehran's stockpile of uranium enriched nearly to weapons-grade levels.

But a diplomat close to the IAEA confirmed on Friday that inspectors are currently in Iran where they are inspecting a second undamaged site, and will not leave the country ahead of the expected reimposition of sanctions this weekend. IAEA inspectors earlier watched a fuel replacement at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on August 27 and 28.

The Europeans have said this alone is not enough to halt the sanctions from coming into place Saturday.

The move is expected to heighten already magnified tensions between Iran and the West. It's unclear how Iran will respond, given that in the past, officials have threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, potentially following North Korea, which abandoned the treaty in 2003 and then built atomic weapons.