Non-return procedure: how will the restoration of sanctions against Iran turn out

The restoration of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran could radicalize the country's foreign policy and reverse the course of "rapprochement through dialogue." Tehran has already recalled its ambassadors to Britain, France and Germany for consultations, who initiated the return of restrictions. At the same time, the Islamic Republic is unlikely to withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), experts say. This discredits the peaceful nature of the Iranian program and will give an argument to opponents (including Israel) to increase pressure. Nevertheless, there is still a window for a deal — the United States is trading sanctions in exchange for all stocks of highly enriched uranium, and the Russian Federation and China do not intend to return strict restrictions. The prospects for a nuclear deal in these conditions are described in the Izvestia article.

"Snapback" brought back sanctions against Iran

After a ten-year hiatus, the UN Security Council reinstated sanctions against Iran under six resolutions. (1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835 and 1929) of the period 2006-2010. They prohibit the enrichment and reprocessing of uranium, the supply of weapons, and Iran's acquisition of technology for its space sector and missile program. In addition, the old restrictions in the oil and gas and banking sectors have returned. The sanctions came into force on the night of September 28, and the initiators were the so-called "eurotroika", using the snapback mechanism. Against this background, Tehran has already recalled its ambassadors to Britain, France and Germany for consultations.

According to paragraph 11 of the JCPOA, any party to the deal has the right to declare to the Security Council a "significant non—fulfillment of obligations" by Iran, regardless of the degree of involvement in the negotiation process. At the same time, no permanent member of the Security Council, even with the right of veto, can prevent the restoration of sanctions through a "snapback". This reservation, in theory, should have eliminated the risk of the mechanism becoming an instrument of political manipulation.

However, it turned out exactly the opposite — the anti-Iranian initiative was launched by Western countries, in fact, unilaterally. And the veto ban embedded in the mechanism allowed Eurotroika to bring the bureaucratic procedure to an end. Even despite the resistance of Russia and China and their attempts to introduce alternative resolutions. So, on September 26, the UN Security Council rejected a joint resolution by Moscow and Beijing to extend the validity of the Iranian nuclear deal by six months. This is how they tried to prevent the restoration of international sanctions against Tehran.

So, in fact, Iran has returned to the interim status quo of 2010, when diplomatic and economic pressure on the country was close to maximum. However, an important caveat should be made here: the previous sanctions were imposed during the rule of the "militant ultraconservative" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when Tehran periodically demonstrated ambiguous steps on the nuclear track and did not actively seek to negotiate with external players. The reformist wing, led by current President Masoud Peseshkian, takes a different approach. Official Tehran was ready to return to the deal with minimal conditions, demanding only to take into account the mistakes of the "first version" of the JCPOA and guarantee non-withdrawal from the new agreement by the United States and other guarantors.

Nevertheless, Eurotroika considered Iran's aspiration insufficient and used the "snapback" first as a tool of intimidation, threatening to activate it from mid-summer 2025 if Tehran did not accept the current conditions of the West, and then as a means of direct pressure.

The future of the Nuclear Deal

The restoration of sanctions against Iran has complicated the already unstable negotiating background around its nuclear program. Finding itself in the position of the attacked, Tehran has actually lost the motivation to seek dialogue. The new behind-the-scenes agreements reached in Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (where Iranian and Western officials and scientists authorized to deal with this issue arrived in turn) had already stopped responding to the international situation by the end of September.

And although the "negotiation window" is still not officially closed — Oman, Turkey and Egypt still offer the parties a platform for new meetings — major breakthroughs in the dialogue should not be expected now. The last attempt to reach an agreement was made less than a day before the activation of the "snapback". The United States agreed to give Iran a three-month reprieve before sanctions were reinstated in exchange for the transfer of the republic's highly enriched uranium reserves. As expected, Tehran rejected this proposal.

Judging by the reaction of European officials, the West did not count on Tehran's compliance too much anyway and now they intend to "put the squeeze on it." In this sense, the positions of the United States and the Eurotroika have noticeably synchronized. The only difference is that Washington is set for a tougher confrontation and in the future is ready to expand pressure on Tehran, including on the military plane. Moreover, this was already proven in practice in June 2025 by Operation Midnight Hammer, when Washington attacked Iran's nuclear facilities. At the same time, the Europeans still aim to use only diplomatic and economic tools.

The nuclear issue is just an excuse to limit the activity of the Iranian side, while the West's real claims against Tehran are much broader, says Yuri Mavashev, an orientalist and lecturer at the Department of World Politics and World Economy at the RANEPA Institute of Management.

— In fact, Germany, France and the United Kingdom supported and continued the US position on Iran. This position is to put Iran out of the brackets of regional macro-regional processes. In the understanding of the West, Tehran began to play an overly active role without the demand of Western capitals," the expert concludes.

At the same time, even after the restoration of all international sanctions, Tehran still has "loopholes", as Russia and China have stated that they do not consider the actions of the Security Council in this matter legitimate. The Russian Foreign Ministry pointed to gross violations and "simplifications" when launching the "snapback". In particular, Europe, in an effort to increase pressure on Tehran, has "jumped" several steps of the bureaucratic process. "First, the parties must sort out the claims in the dispute resolution mechanism. And only if everything has reached an impasse — bring the issue to the UN Security Council. This mechanism, contrary to the statements of Eurotroika, was not used. London, Paris and Berlin skipped these stages and immediately submitted the paper to the Security Council," said Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the department.

Another blow to the legitimacy of the current version of the "snapback" is that the Western guarantors of the deal themselves have repeatedly demonstrated double standards in interpreting the provisions of the JCPOA, in addition to the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the deal in 2018 during Trump's first term. For example, the Eurotroika ignored the fact that one of the parties withdrew from the deal (which automatically released Tehran from most of its obligations), and used the moment as a starting point for the introduction of new sanctions in 2023. They motivated the decision by the fact that the Iranian side does not comply with the expired provisions of the deal. Thus, Western states did not allow the process of restoring the "nuclear deal" with Tehran to be fully implemented, Ilya Shcherbakov, an employee of the Department of International Relations and Integration Processes at the Faculty of Political Science at Moscow State University, emphasizes.

However, UN Security Council resolution 2231 in support of the Iran nuclear deal will cease to be effective on the day the JCPOA expires on October 18, 2025, and there is still time for negotiations.

How will Iran respond to the restoration of sanctions

The restoration of UN Security Council sanctions will have a serious impact on the internal political situation in Iran. First of all, it will complicate the life of the reformist wing, since, in the end, Peseshkian's stated course of "rapprochement through dialogue" did not justify itself. And given that the previous attempt by the reformists to reach an agreement with the West, back under President Hassan Rouhani, who secured the first deal, also turned into a failure, the conviction of the futility of negotiations has only strengthened. The drift of sentiment towards the conservative camp has accelerated, and it risks soon manifesting itself, including in foreign policy.

The most obvious step is Iran's withdrawal from the Nuclear Non—Proliferation Treaty. Moreover, Tehran has been threatening them since June 2025, when its territory was attacked by Israel and the United States. According to conservatives, this decision should be an open signal to Iran's opponents in the West that the country does not intend to sacrifice national interests in exchange for ephemeral promises.

By the way, the morning after the Security Council meeting, the Iranian parliament met in closed session to discuss the country's possible withdrawal from the treaty. So far, however, there has only been an exchange of views on this issue, and the draft bill prepared in the summer has not been put into operation. It should not be ruled out that additional symbolic steps will be timed to October 18 — then the last restrictions would have to be lifted from Tehran, in accordance with the first edition of the JCPOA.

Brussels is convinced that Tehran will continue to "take revenge" exclusively on the IAEA, including because the majority of ordinary Iranians associate the "nuclear issue" exclusively with this organization, limiting the transparency of their nuclear industry. However, it is unlikely that Tehran will decide to withdraw from the DAY, one of the diplomats of the Eurotroika countries told Reuters on condition of anonymity. In his opinion, China or Russia are unlikely to approve Iran's hasty creation of an atomic bomb. In June, Vladimir Putin stated that Russia was against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction at the expense of anyone, including Iran.

Indeed, Iran's hypothetical withdrawal from the NPT will weaken the stability of the thesis about the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program, which official Tehran constantly emphasizes, and will provide an argument for radical actions to regional opponents, primarily Israel. Therefore, Tehran is likely to stick to the tactics of "intimidation" for now: continuing to keep opponents in suspense, but not crossing new "red lines".