America’s Withdrawal from the Iran Deal Doesn’t Prevent It from Punishing the Islamic Republic’s Violations

The 2015 “Iran deal,” as it has come to be known, in fact consists of two parts, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—an agreement among Iran, the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China—and UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which encoded elements of that plan into international law. Should Iran violate the terms of the agreement, any one of the parties can unilaterally trigger “snapback”—that is, the immediate re-imposition of sanctions—through the Security Council. Richard Goldberg explains why the time has come to take such a measure: