“All Iranian officials have been ordered by the National Security Council to designate successors a few ranks after themselves so that if something happens, the country will not be left in uncertainty," the NSC secretary said on Saturday, three months after Israeli strikes killed many high-ranking Iranian authorities.
The Iranian parliament will debate withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on Sunday and decide on it, a senior lawmaker said.
"The issue of building a nuclear bomb will be considered separately at a later stage, and we can place it on the agenda," the IRGC general-turned-lawmaker Esmail Kowsari told the state-run YJC.
"Since Iran clearly does not comply with its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed to in 2015, we had no choice but to trigger the snapback of sanctions," German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Saturday.
"Following a clear vote by the Security Council yesterday, sanctions will be effective later today," he told the UN General Assembly.
"But let me emphasize that we remain open to negotiations on a new agreement. Diplomacy can and should continue."
Russia's foreign minister told the UN General Assembly that the West's rejection of "a rational proposal by China and Russia to extend the 2015 Iran deal in order to allow time for diplomacy.. finally exposed the West's policy of sabotaging the pursuit of constructive solutions."
It also exposed the West's "desire to extract unilateral concessions from Tehran through blackmail and pressure," Sergei Lavrov said.
"We consider such a policy to be unacceptable and consider all manipulations to restore anti-Iranian UN sanctions as well as the sanctions themselves to be illegal."
