On October 18, the global ban on the sale of conventional arms to Iran expired and opened the way for the Islamic Republic to import weapons, including warplanes and helicopter gunships, missiles, tanks, artillery and other weapon systems. The ban was imposed by U.N. Resolution 1929 in 2010. It was lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal – enshrined in U.N. resolution 2231 – as one of the incentives for Tehran to cooperate on its nuclear program. Iran was also allowed to export its domestically produced arms for the first time in a decade. 

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The Department of Homeland Security, in its first annual risk assessment, said that the United States faced four major threats from Iran, including: cyber attacks, election interference, terrorism, and spreading disinformation on COVID-19. Iranian and North Korean cyber actors “pose a threat to U.S. systems, networks, and information” even though China and Russia are the more capable adversaries, according to the report. The following are relevant excerpts on Iran. 

Richard Nephew, author of The Art of Sanctions, is a senior research scholar at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy. He was director for Iran policy at the National Security Staff from 2011 to 2013, during the expansion of U.S. sanctions on Iran. He coordinated sanctions policy at the Department of State from 2013 to 2015, during negotiations between the six major powers and Iran that led to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran is lagging behind other Middle Eastern countries in expanding relations with China, according to a new study by Lucille Greer and Esfandyar Batmanghelidj. In June 2020, the “Final Draft of Iran-Strategic Partnership” circulated on Iranian social media and caused a firestorm in Iran among the general public and politicians.

September 28

Diplomacy: Iran pushed for an immediate ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan after fighting erupted over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif urged his Azeri and Armenian counterparts to exercise restraint during phone calls on Sunday. 

On September 23, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz condemned Iran for spreading “chaos, extremism and sectarianism” across the Middle East and urged a “comprehensive” worldwide solution to prevent it from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. “Partial solutions and appeasement did not stop its threats to international peace and security,” he said, in his debut address to the opening of the 75th U.N. General Assembly. 

On September 20, Iran condemned the U.S. decision to reimpose U.N. sanctions that had been lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. The United States had no legal standing to invoke sanctions since it had withdrawn from the agreement in May 2018, officials said. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the United States would effectively be punishing countries that honored their commitments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and U.N. Resolution 2231, a U.S. resolution passed unanimously by the Security Council.

On September 19, the Trump administration formally reimposed U.N. sanctions on Iran that had been lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the United States unilaterally would reenact five sets of U.N. sanctions from 2006 through 2010, despite opposition from the other five major powers that brokered the nuclear deal and most of the 15-member Security Council. The original sanctions had been lifted in Resolution 2231, which was proposed by the Obama Administration and accepted in a unanimous vote by the Security Council in September 2015.

On September 20, Sazandegi, a centrist daily, published a cover photo of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Death of U.S. Judge,” read the headline marking her passing on September 18 of pancreatic cancer. The newspaper also speculated on the political repercussions. “With the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Democrats fear a change in the power balance of the Supreme Court,” Sazandegi reported.