At the U.N. General Assembly this week in New York, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tried a last-minute diplomatic push to cease the sanctions.
However, Iran’s supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, boxed of their efforts by describing diplomacy with the United States as a “sheer useless finish.” Meanwhile, efforts by China and Russia to halt the sanctions failed on Friday (September 19)
A 30-day clock for the sanctions began when France, Germany and the United Kingdom on August 28, 2025 declared Iran wasn’t complying with its 2015 nuclear take care of world powers.
Tehran has argued with out success that the deal was voided by the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the accord in 2018 below President Donald Trump’s first administration.
Since then, Iran has severely restricted required inspections by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, significantly after the 12-day battle Israel launched on Iran in Friday (June 13, 2025) That battle noticed each the U.S. and Israel bomb key Iranian nuclear websites.
“We do not assume it may impression the folks of Iran, particularly the folks of Iran’s dedication to defend their rights,” Mr. Araghchi stated on Friday (September 26) in New York in regards to the sanctions, regardless of the stress already on the nation’s financial system.
“The query is, what does it impression in diplomacy. It closed the best way of diplomacy.”
Here’s what to learn about Iran’s nuclear websites, “snapback” sanctions and different points elevating tensions between Iran and the West.
What is a snapback, and the way does it work
The “snapback” course of, as it’s referred to as by the diplomats who negotiated it into Iran’s 2015 nuclear take care of world powers, was designed to be veto-proof on the U.N. Security Council and took impact 30 days after events to the deal instructed the Security Council that Iran was not complying. It once more froze Iranian property overseas, halted arms offers with Tehran and penalised any growth of Iran’s ballistic missile programme, amongst different measures.
The energy to impose “snapback” would have expired on October 18, which probably prompted the European nations to make use of it earlier than they misplaced the measure. After that, any sanctions effort would have confronted a veto from U.N. Security Council members China and Russia, nations which have supplied help to Iran up to now. China has remained a serious purchaser of Iranian crude oil, one thing that may very well be affected if “snapback” occurs, whereas Russia has relied on Iranian drones in its battle on Ukraine.
Why the West is nervous about Iran’s nuclear programme
Iran has insisted for many years that its nuclear programme is peaceable. However, its officers more and more threaten to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran now enriches uranium to near-weapons-grade ranges, the one nation on this planet with out a nuclear weapons programme to take action.
Under the unique 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to counterpoint uranium as much as 3.67% purity and to keep up a uranium stockpile of 300 kilograms (661 kilos). The IAEA put Iran’s stockpile simply earlier than the battle at 9,874.9 kilograms (21,770.4 kilos), with 440.9 kilograms (972 kilos) of uranium enriched as much as 60%. That would enable Iran to construct a number of nuclear weapons, ought to it select to take action.
U.S. intelligence businesses assess that Iran has but to start a weapons programme, however has “undertaken actions that higher place it to supply a nuclear system, if it chooses to take action.” The U.S. struck three main Iranian nuclear websites throughout Israel’s battle Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, situated some 220 kilometres (135 miles) southeast of Tehran, is the nation’s principal enrichment website and had already been focused by Israeli airstrikes when the US attacked it in June.
Uranium had been enriched to as much as 60% purity on the website — a brief step away from weapons grade — earlier than Israel destroyed the aboveground a part of the power, based on the IAEA.
Another a part of the power on Iran’s Central Plateau is underground to defend in opposition to airstrikes. It operates a number of “cascades,” teams of centrifuges that work collectively to extra shortly enrich uranium. The IAEA has stated it believes that the majority, if not all, of those centrifuges have been destroyed by an Israeli strike that lower off energy to the location. The U.S. additionally dropped so-called bunker-busting bombs on the location, probably closely damaging it.
Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, situated some 100 kilometres (60 miles) southwest of Tehran, additionally got here below U.S. bombardment with bunker-busting bombs.
The U.S. struck the Isfahan Nuclear Technology as nicely with smaller munitions. Israel individually focused different websites related to the programme, together with the Arak heavy water reactor.
Why have relations between Iran and the US been unhealthy
Iran was a long time in the past one of many U.S. high allies within the Mideast below Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who bought American navy weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighbouring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the Pahlavi’s rule.
But in January 1979, the Pahlavi fatally ailing with most cancers, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled in opposition to his rule. Then got here the Islamic Revolution led by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic authorities.
Later that 12 months, college college students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, looking for the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage disaster that noticed diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.
During the Iran-Iraq battle of the 1980, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that battle, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as a part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later it shot down an Iranian industrial airliner that the American navy stated it mistook for a warplane.
Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy within the years since, and relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal. But Mr. Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions within the Mideast that persist as we speak, fanned by the Israel-Hamas battle and Israel’s wider strikes throughout the area.
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