Instead of England, France, and Germany (E3) holding the US and Israel accountable for unprovoked aggression against Iran in June 2025, they have cemented their supremacist biases by further punishing the Victim through sanctions.
Snapping the West’s and the UN’s Guise of Objectivity
On August 28, 2025, E3, the European parties to the JCPOA, which had lifted multiple sanctions against Iran in exchange for the latter agreeing to maintain only a peaceful nuclear program, wrote to the UN Security Council (UNSC) to trigger the snapback of pre-JCPOA sanctions, citing alleged noncompliance by the Iranian state. Remarkably, this action comes over two months after Israel- an undeclared nuclear state that the West never forces to submit to scrutiny of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)- launched unprovoked aggression against Iran, killing about 1000 and injuring over 3000 people. Also, the attack caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and was followed by a similarly unprovoked bombing by the US. The UNSC has not seen the need to view US-Israel aggression beginning on June 13, 2025, as both a threat and breach of peace, and make recommendations in line with articles 39, 40, and 41 of the UN Charter, to hold perpetrators to account. Also, no Western European country, including E3, has pushed for accountability from the US and Israel. This paper explores how E3’s move to trigger JCPOA’s snapback mechanism exposes the Hypocrisy of the global security structure embodied by the UN and piloted by, among others, the US and E3, which have been the leading initiators of wars and associated human suffering in the last decades.
The US, a permanent UNSC member, enabled Israeli attack while distracting Iran with fake diplomatic overtures, but the E3 still demands that Iran return to such a diplomatic sham. E3’s move shows that the UNSC, which has done nothing to protect a non-nuclear country from attacks by two nuclear-armed countries, is supposed to reimpose sanctions on Iran, feigning concerns about the potential threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons, while ignoring the present nuclear threat Iran faces. Clearly, the UNSC does not view the West’s bombing of countries in the global south as a threat to world peace, and has abetted their reckless military adventures that have killed millions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and North Africa over the last decades. In hindsight, anti-Iran Sanctions and JCPOA appear as a protracted preparation to enable the US and Israel to implement the destruction they meted out to Iraqis to Iranians, with the UNSC’s support or accommodation.
Perennial Aggressors Driving UN Sanctions and JCPOA
In 2006, when the US, E3, and their allies had used the UN to justify the invasion and destruction of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, they started moving resolutions to sanction Iran, claiming that its nuclear programs would present a threat, effectively whipping up anti-Iran hysteria. Then, the US, UK, and France (P3), all nuclear powers that were ravaging civilians and destroying infrastructure in different countries, were countenanced by the UNSC to move resolutions that hyped the threat that Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons would present. Since then, the UN has continued displaying bias against and disinterest in protecting the states and populations in the Global South. Meanwhile, the permanent UNSC members plus Germany (P5+1) moved several resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran between 2006 and 2010, acting on draft resolutions presented by the aforementioned P3. Later, the US imposed other unilateral secondary sanctions against Iran’s critical industries, while engineering new violence against Syria and Libya between 2010 and 2015. These sanctions barred other countries from conducting trade with Iran in critical industries such as banking, financial services, and shipping, barring the country from benefitting from its oil resources. Simultaneously, the European Union (EU), while ignoring the US-led wars, ramped up restrictions that culminated in an oil and financial embargo against Iran. Meanwhile, the US and EU allies, Australia, Canada, Japan, and South Korea, some of which supported wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, joined in an economic blockade against Iran, which pressured the country to participate in the process leading to JCPOA, from which the US withdrew before 3 years lapsed. The June 2025 attack, which occurred nearly 20 years after anti-Iran hysteria began (despite Iran submitting to the IAEA’s inspection) by Israel, which received western assistance in developing undeclared nuclear weapons, shows double standards. Thus, Western politicians’ repeatedly stating that Iran cannot have Nuclear weapons exposes a two-tiered Global security architecture, with the West and its allies being allowed to have weapons to ravage resource-rich countries with sanctions and bombings, while the Global South having neither the protection through the UNSC nor the right to develop nuclear weapons for self-defense.
JCPOA as another Cloak and Dagger Game of Neocolonialism
E3 reinstating the snapback mechanism after Iran opened its nuclear program to the IAEA scrutiny under JCPOA has exposed Western powers’ hypocrisy. Notably, E3 and the UN took no meaningful measures to give Iran sanction relief after the US withdrew from JCPOA, meaning the deal had minimal practical benefits for Iranians. The former’s action shows repurposing of the UNSC, away from pursuing global peace and redirecting its focus towards pursuing the West’s parochial interests. This move ignores the Americans’ unilateral withdrawal from JCPOA in 2018, and indicates that the West was not interested in seeking a diplomatic resolution of its supposed differences with Iran. Also, Washington’s renewed sanctions restricted Iran’s ability to export excess heavy water, setting it up to fail, which further undermined the JCPOA. Absurdly, accusations that Iran was not observing tenets of the JCPOA, which Washington violated, were used by Israel, a nonparty to the deal, to bomb Iran, showing a state of lawlessness in global security architecture. E3 is probably seeking to prime Iran for future attacks, since similar restrictions prevented Iran from importing weapons to effectively defend its skies.
Notably, the UNSC enforced an arms embargo against Iran, but could not protect the country from other countries, making it an enabler of the June 2025 attack. War planners in the US, Israel, or Western Europe may have been behind the sanctions leading to the JCPOA that left it exposed. With a biased UNSC, Iran and countries in the Global South have no alternative but to take internal measures to protect themselves against the West’s neocolonialism, driven through sanctions and wars, which have been laundered or implemented through the UNSC. Developing countries can only rely on their abilities, including militaries, alliances, and obtaining nuclear weapons, as the only guarantee of their existence and populations’ safety, as Western countries have shown they can easily overthrow and devastate countries and kill millions in the global south without any responsibility.
Simon Chege Ndiritu, is a political observer and research analyst from Africa
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