The White House said on Tuesday although there is strong indication that Iran's recent move to test a new ballistic missile has violated Resolution 1929 of the United Nations, it would not complicate efforts to implement the July nuclear accord.
Ballistic missile tests by Iran are banned under Security Council Resolution 1929, which dates from 2010 and remains valid until the deal, officially referred to as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, goes into effect.
The Emad precision-guided missile was tested on Sunday. Defense Minister Lieutenant General Hossein Dehqan said Tehran does not feel bound by any obligations when it comes to strengthening its defense and security capabilities. White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said, “This is altogether separate from the nuclear agreement that Iran reached with the rest of the world.”
“In contrast to the repeated violations of the UN Security Council resolution that pertains to their ballistic missile activities, we’ve seen that Iran over the last couple of years has demonstrated a track record of abiding by the commitments that they made in the context of the nuclear talks,” The Wall Street Journal reported him as saying. Elsewhere at a daily press conference, State Department spokesman Mark Toner echoed Earnest's remarks that the ban on Iran's missile tests does not fall under the JCPOA because the action plan was negotiated to place constraints on Tehran's nuclear program rather than its military capability.
"These kinds of missile tests are not a violation of the JCPOA, which had been some of the questions that we’ve gotten about this, because the focus of the JCPOA clearly is on Iran’s nuclear program."
"But any conventional arms transfers or missile activity currently prohibited by existing UNSC resolutions, or US – UNSC resolutions, or prohibited in the future by Resolution 2231 would be violations of Iran's UN obligations and should be dealt with through the appropriate UN channels," Toner said. He added that the US administration intends to raise the incident at the UN Security Council, according to a transcript of his remarks carried by the website of US Department of State.
Britain's UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters in New York that "the existing (sanctions) architecture remains in place" for the time being, adding that the council's Iran sanctions committee should look into the incident, Reuters reported.
A total of 220 out of 290 Iranian lawmakers praised the missile test on Wednesday, announcing their full support of measures that "strengthen Iran's defense capabilities."
