FOREIGN POLICY/IRAN/UN: “Joined by three Western allies, the United States on Wednesday [8-2-17] escalated pressure on Iran over its space launch last week, saying the act disregarded a United Nations Security Council resolution on the use of missiles and was ‘threatening and provocative.’
In a letter to the Security Council and Secretary General António Guterres, Ambassador Nikki R. Haley of the United States and envoys from Britain, France and Germany said the Iranian missile that carried a satellite into orbit was ‘inherently capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.’…
The Trump administration, which has been seeking ways to declare Iran in violation of the nuclear agreement, quickly placed sanctions on Iranian companies connected to the launch last week, a unilateral and largely symbolic act that was expected to have little or no practical effect.
But the letter from the four countries — all parties to the nuclear agreement — shows that the United States is not alone in its increasingly irritated response to Iran’s repeated missile testing.
The tests do not violate the nuclear agreement, which eased or ended many punitive economic sanctions on Iran in return for its verifiable pledges of peaceful nuclear work. Iran is abiding by the pact’s provisions, United Nations monitors have said.
Still, Iran can ill afford to alienate Britain, France and Germany. Unlike the United States, they have been major sources of the foreign investment that has begun to flow into Iran, albeit slowly, since the nuclear pact took effect.”
-Rick Gladstone, “Now U.S. Has Company in Raising Pressure on Iran Over Missile,” The New Your Times online, Aug. 2, 2017