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US Congress Urges Trump Administration to Extend Iran Arms Embargo

The US Capitol is seen in Washington DC on January 22, 2018. (Getty Images)
The US Capitol is seen in Washington DC on January 22, 2018. (Getty Images)
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US Congress Urges Trump Administration to Extend Iran Arms Embargo

The US Capitol is seen in Washington DC on January 22, 2018. (Getty Images)
The US Capitol is seen in Washington DC on January 22, 2018. (Getty Images)

The Democratic and Republic Congress members voted overwhelmingly on Monday for extending the arms embargo against Iran that expires in October.

The majority of 387 out of 435 members sent a letter on Monday to Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, urging him to renew the United Nations embargo.

“The UN arms embargo will be the first provision of the Iran nuclear deal to expire,” said Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel.

“UN Security Council Resolution 2231 bans arms transfers to and from Iran, yet Iran routinely violates this resolution with impunity, particularly in Syria, Iraq and Yemen,” the members wrote in their letter.

“This letter, supported overwhelmingly by both parties in the House, represents an imperative to reauthorize this provision — not through snapback or going it alone - but through a careful diplomatic campaign. The Trump Administration has promised a better deal, and it falls to the administration to solve this crisis, not make it worse. Iran continues to be a danger to the United States, our interests, and our allies. We need a realistic and practical strategy to prevent Iran from becoming a greater menace,” Engel added.

“Iran’s illicit transfers of weapons directly contribute to some of the most destabilizing threats to the United States and our partners in the Middle East,” they added.

“We are also concerned about the expiration of the UN-imposed travel restrictions on some of Iran’s most notorious individuals who have long violated UN proliferation and weapons restrictions,” the letter read.

“The UN travel restrictions allow states to refuse transit to covered individuals, which limits their ability to train, fundraise, and plan around the globe. Restricting their movement is critical to our national security.”

Ranking Member Michael McCaul said: “Nearly every member of the US House of Representatives is in agreement: Iran must not be allowed to buy or sell weapons. This isn’t a Republican or Democrat issue, or even just an American issue."

"We need to extend the UN arms embargo on Iran for the sake of international peace and security. I am proud the House is speaking with one voice to protect the world against Iran’s aggressive and destabilizing behavior.”

Pompeo last week vowed to use all means available to extend the arms embargo on Iran.

He said he would ask the UN Security Council to prolong the ban.

The United States in 2018 withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal that sought to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. As part of that deal, a UN arms embargo on Iran expires in October.

But China and particularly Russia, which stand to win major new arms contracts with Iran, are certain to oppose an extension. They only agreed to the five-year ban in 2015 as a compromise reached with the Obama administration.

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Russia Warns the United States against Possible Nuclear Testing under Trump

A woman takes a tour of the Bunker-703, a recently declassified nuclear-resistant bomb shelter built in 1961 at a depth of 43 meters (141 feet) for the Soviet Foreign Affairs Ministry archive, in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024. (AP)
A woman takes a tour of the Bunker-703, a recently declassified nuclear-resistant bomb shelter built in 1961 at a depth of 43 meters (141 feet) for the Soviet Foreign Affairs Ministry archive, in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024. (AP)
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Russia Warns the United States against Possible Nuclear Testing under Trump

A woman takes a tour of the Bunker-703, a recently declassified nuclear-resistant bomb shelter built in 1961 at a depth of 43 meters (141 feet) for the Soviet Foreign Affairs Ministry archive, in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024. (AP)
A woman takes a tour of the Bunker-703, a recently declassified nuclear-resistant bomb shelter built in 1961 at a depth of 43 meters (141 feet) for the Soviet Foreign Affairs Ministry archive, in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024. (AP)

Russia's point man for arms control cautioned Donald Trump's incoming administration on Friday against resuming nuclear testing, saying Moscow would keep its own options open amid what he said was Washington's "extremely hostile" stance.

The resumption of testing by the world's two biggest nuclear powers would usher in a new and precarious era nearly 80 years since the United States tested the first nuclear bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico in July 1945.

Russia, the United States and China are all undertaking major modernizations of their nuclear arsenals just as the arms control treaties of the Cold War era between the Soviet Union and the United States crumble.

In an explicit signal to Washington, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees arms control, said Trump had taken a radical position on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) during his first term.

"The international situation is extremely difficult at the moment, the American policy in its various aspects is extremely hostile to us today," Ryabkov was quoted as saying in an interview with Russia's Kommersant newspaper.

"So, the options for us to act in the interests of ensuring security and the potential measures and actions we have to do this - and to send politically appropriate signals... does not rule anything out."

During Trump's first 2017-2021 term as president, his administration discussed whether or not to conduct the first US nuclear test since 1992, the Washington Post reported in 2020.

In 2023 President Vladimir Putin formally revoked Russia's ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), bringing his country into line with the United States.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed by Russia in 1996 and ratified in 2000. The United States signed the treaty in 1996 but has not ratified it.

NUCLEAR TEST?

There are fears among some arms control experts that the United States is moving towards a return to testing as a way to develop new weapons and at the same time send a signal to rivals such as Russia and China.

Russia, with 5,580 warheads, and the United States, with 5,044, are by far the world's biggest nuclear powers, holding about 88% of the world's nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists. China has about 500 warheads.

In the five decades between 1945 and the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out, 1,032 of them by the United States and 715 of them by the Soviet Union, according to the United Nations.

Post-Soviet Russia has not carried out a nuclear test. The Soviet Union last tested in 1990.

Putin has said Russia would consider testing a nuclear weapon if the United States did. Last month Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks, and after Moscow said Ukraine had struck deep inside Russia with US-made ATACMS missiles.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, only a few countries have tested nuclear weapons, according to the Arms Control Association: the United States last tested in 1992, China and France in 1996, India and Pakistan in 1998, and North Korea in 2017.