A global ban on Iran exporting its ballistic missile technology and other weapons has expired, despite the fact that Tehran continues to arm the likes of Russia and Hamas.
The easing of the U.N. pressure was scheduled as “Transition Day” under the much-maligned 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA, but “Iran’s serious and escalating non-compliance,” as the United Kingdom put it, has stoked Western anxiety that Tehran will acquire and distribute more advanced weapons to hot spots around the world. Those restrictions will be “terminated automatically," Iran's envoy to the United Nations emphasized on Wednesday, while threatening "to take appropriate response" to Western efforts to mitigate the effects of their expiration.
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"As of today, there will be no restrictions on transfer of missile-related items ... and cooperation in all military and defense areas would be carried out, without any restriction, based on the needs and discretion of the Islamic Republic of Iran, within the framework of bilateral contracts with other countries," the Iranian Foreign Ministry also said.
The expiration of the restrictions could result in Iran taking "the proliferation threat that it already posed and put it on steroids," according to Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Behnam Ben Taleblu, an expert on Iranian security issues.
Iran has provided attack drones to supplement Russia’s dwindling missile stockpiles during the war in Ukraine, in addition to a long-term project to equip Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas.
“Iran’s development, procurement, and proliferation of missiles and missile-related technology remains one of the greatest challenges to international peace and security,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday. “We remain focused on addressing Iran’s destabilizing proliferation activities, in particular its missile and UAV programs and the threats they pose to the world.”
U.S. officials marked Transition Day by unveiling new sanctions targeting Iran’s weapons industries and exports, “including such activities involving Russia, the People’s Republic of China, Venezuela, and elsewhere.” They also published a bulletin that “informs private industry of deceptive practices used by Iranian ballistic missile procurement networks” and launched a new “proliferation security initiative” with key European powers and dozens of other states.
“[The expiration provision] was based on the assumption that Iran would take the necessary steps towards restoring confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program,” the United States said in a joint statement with 46 other countries. “This has not happened. In this context, it is imperative that all states continue to take steps to counter Iran’s destabilizing ballistic missile-related activities through ongoing counterproliferation cooperation.”
As parties to the 2015 deal, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have the authority to invoke a “snap back” of all the sanctions waived, which would make those sanctions binding throughout the United Nations system, but they chose to instead impose those restrictions through their own national laws.
“This step is a proportionate and legitimate response to Iran’s nuclear escalation and is fully compliant with the JCPOA,” a British foreign office spokesperson said Wednesday. “The extent of Iran’s nuclear advances has no credible civilian justification. The program poses a grave threat to international peace and security and undermines the global non-proliferation system.”
That’s a more limited step than the policy some Western officials were contemplating last year.
“In the longer term, the October 2023 expiration of the missile testing and [missile technology control regime] provisions may provide a more useful deadline for policymakers,” French diplomat Louis Dugit-Gros, a Washington Institute visiting fellow, wrote last year. "That is, if a deal to revive the JCPOA is not reached or abandoned by then, using snapback to prevent the expiration of these provisions may make sense.”
Dugit-Gros characterized “snapback [as] effectively the emergency stop button for nuclear negotiations, and triggering it would be taken as a definitive sign that talks had failed.” Western officials are not ready to pull that brake.
“The Europeans still have that leverage," a senior State Department official said on Wednesday. "They are being smart about using different leverage at different periods of time. And we think that the approach that they're taking now is the right one. And we're working very closely with them to ensure that there are different tools available to us.”
Ben Taleblu, who believes the sanctions should be snapped back, takes Iran’s apparent hesitance to export ballistic missiles as evidence that restrictions had succeeded in constraining Iran’s distribution of the weapons. “This is a game-changer for Iranian risk tolerance,” he told the Washington Examiner. “And it’s the beginning of a new phase for the Iranian arms industry ... the sale to state actors is a fundamentally different game.”
Russia, for its part, emphasized its legal freedom to expand the transactions.
"Supplies to and from Iran of products falling under the Missile Technology Control Regime no longer require prior approval by the U.N. Security Council,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, characterizing the Western limitations as a "slippery slope of lawlessness being promoted by Washington.”
That raises the specter of Russia not only purchasing weapons but providing them to Iran.
"Now it could even legally obtain intercontinental ballistic missiles from China, Russia, or North Korea," Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs Gemunder Center fellow Gabriel Noronha, who worked on Iran issues at the State Department from 2019 to 2021, said in a Wednesday memo. "This comes at a time when Iran already exports numerous drones to Russia for use against Ukrainian civilians."
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State Department officials hope that the dozens of countries that joined the proliferation security initiative will be able to mitigate much of the potential harms that otherwise would arise from the expiration of the U.N. bans.
"It is no surprise that Iran and Russia are describing a situation that they basically already have," the senior State Department official said. "We are making very clear, with a wide swath of partners and allies, that it's not business as usual, despite what Russia and Iran [say]. The international community's very concerned about that relationship."