US envoy says recent Iran missile test violated UN sanctions

The USA on Tuesday said Tehran may have breached a Security Council resolution during Sunday’s test of the new Imad missile.

“We have seen Iran nearly serially violate the global community’s concerns about their ballistic missile program”, Earnest said.

“We’ll obviously raise this at the UNSC as we have done in previous launches”, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters, noting the test appeared to be a violation of United Nations Security resolution 1929.

Iranian officials have said the nuclear agreement will not affect its military forces, particularly its ballistic missile programme.

Nevertheless, he maintained with a straight face that “this is altogether separate from the nuclear agreement that Iran reached with the rest of the world”.

The events suggest Iran is sending a message to the world that, even though it agreed to a landmark global agreement three months ago curbing its nuclear program, the Islamic Republic has not abandoned its tendency to act outside the worldwide system and assert itself on the world stage. The U.S. is putting a report together to submit to the Security Council’s Iran Sanctions Committee “in the coming days”, Power said.

Many are calling for the Obama administration to reimpose sanctions on Iran as punishment for the ballistic missile test. Recent statements by Iranian officials indicate that President Obama will still announce the removal of sanctions at a few point next week. It will start replacing the current weapons with newer, advanced generation of long-range solid and liquid fuel missiles by next year, said Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh. Royce questioned what the goal of testing and developing such missiles was, if not to deliver a nuclear weapon.

The deal has come in for criticism from hardliners in both the United States and Iran.

An Iranian news outlet broadcast images on Wednesday of an underground missile facility that is said to be one of many that are spread throughout the country, with Iran acknowledging and publicizing their existence for the first time.

Elsewhere in his comments, Zarif noted that Iran “seriously believes that its missile tests have nothing to do with the Resolution 2231 either”. And may I add that the previous resolution 1929 passed in 2010 was according to US Secretary of State John Kerry based on overstuffing the resolution by the US’s envoy to the United Nations by including all these arms embargos with respected tanks, helicopters, missiles and so forth. So, the issue here may seem, on the surface, to be the Iranians flaunting their lack of respect for Obama and lack of intention to stick by any deal with him, but the reality is that it’s putting the writing on the wall of what to expect for the remainder of the Obama presidency. Iran’s energy industry has the most to gain from a renewed ability to do business with other countries.