What do the lawyers say about this?
While the Trump administration removed the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, administration officials maintain they can still petition the United Nations Security Council for a "snapback" of all international sanctions lifted under the accord, which still counts several European countries as members.
Because my view is that sanctions can't be snapped back in place absent an affirmative vote of the UN Security Council, including no veto by a permanent member (coughrussiaandchinacough):
Can the United Nations charter be amended by this deal to carve out an exception to the veto power of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council?
Here's what the Chapter V, Article 27 of the UN charter says about the veto:
1. Each member of the Security Council shall have one vote.
2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members.
3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.
Because I can see the Russians or Chinese objecting to the whole notion that UNSC resolutions can be reimposed after 30 days of inaction by the Security Council. What do we do when the Russians and Chinese (probably correctly, but it has been a long time since I had an international law class) argue that this deal provision is invalid and that no sanctions resolutions can go into effect without 9 votes, including the concurrence of the five permanent members, and they will not go along with it?
But it will be an interesting test of the UN Charter, no? I say we try it just to confirm that Russia and China don't want to stop Iran from getting nukes and that the Obama administration was criminally negligent in peddling this line.
Remember, the awful Iran nuclear deal was designed to get Iran into this nuclear breakout position. Don't even pretend that Iran did all this since Trump pulled out of the deal less than two years ago.
Have a super sparkly day.
