United Nations Arms Embargo on Iran Officially Ends

An arms embargo forbidding Iran from buying, selling or otherwise transferring weapons has ended 13 years after being imposed by the United Nations Security Council. The ban, accompanied by economic sanctions and a freeze on Iranian assets abroad, was instated in March 2007 under Security Council Resolution 1747. It came in response to reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, that Tehran was not acting in compliance with IAEA guidelines in its nuclear research. On Sunday, Iranian state media published a statement by the Foreign Ministry, which said: “As of today, all restrictions on the transfer of arms, related activities and financial services to and from the Islamic Republic of Iran… are all automatically terminated.” The arms embargo was dropped under the terms of a 2015 multilateral agreement, signed by Iran, aimed at preventing it from producing nuclear weapons. The United States withdrew from the deal in 2018, calling it insufficiently strict. Earlier this year, Washington tried to convince members of the Security Council to keep the embargo in place, but to no avail.