The US and Western allies clashed with Russia and China on Thursday over Iran's nuclear intentions, as Washington sought at the United Nations to further justify the war it launched on Iran two weeks ago.
At a meeting of the 15-member UN Security Council, which is chaired this month by the US, Russia and China moved unsuccessfully to block a discussion about a committee established to oversee and enforce UN sanctions on Iran. They were overruled 11-2 with two abstentions.
Addressing the council, US envoy to the United Nations Mike Waltz accused Moscow and Beijing of seeking to protect Tehran by blocking the work of the so-called 1737 Committee.
"All member states of the United Nations should be implementing an arms embargo against Iran, banning the transfer and trade of missile technology, and freezing relevant financial assets," Waltz said.
"The UN provisions to be re-imposed are not arbitrary, but instead, narrowly scoped to address the threat posed by Iran's nuclear, missile and conventional arms programmes and Iran's ongoing support for terrorism," he said.
Waltz said both China and Russia did not want a functional sanctions committee "because they want to protect their partner, Iran, and continue to maintain defence cooperation that is now once again prohibited."
Waltz noted that last week the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency had reiterated that Iran was the only state in the world without nuclear weapons to have produced and accumulated uranium enriched up to 60 per cent, and had refused to provide the IAEA access to this stockpile.
Russia's UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya accused the US and its allies of whipping up "hysteria surrounding supposed plans Iran had to get a nuclear weapon" that were never corroborated by IAEA reports.
"This was done in order to undertake yet another military venture against Tehran and to ensure great escalation of the situation in the Middle East and beyond," he said.
China's representative, Fu Cong, called Washington the "instigator" of the Iranian nuclear crisis and said it had "resorted to blatant use of force against Iran during the negotiation process, which rendered the diplomatic efforts futile."
Iran's UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, told reporters later on Thursday that Iran's nuclear programme "has always been exclusively peaceful," and Tehran would not recognise any attempt to enforce sanctions against it.
US President Donald Trump has used Iran's nuclear programme to justify his war on Iran. He said this month that Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks had the US not struck three key nuclear sites in June, a claim sources have said was not supported by US intelligence assessments.
Britain and France told the Security Council that re-imposing sanctions on Iran was justified by Tehran's failure to address concerns about its nuclear programme.
France said the IAEA was no longer able to guarantee the peaceful nature of the programme and that Tehran's nuclear stockpile was sufficient for 10 nuclear devices.
