When he appeared in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month, Secretary of State John Kerry urged Congress not to renew the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), which expires at the end of this year.
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At the meeting, diplomats also discussed the French initiative for a multilateral conference to restart the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, as well as Syrian peace negotiations.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office said he had instructed the Foreign Ministry to appeal to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany, the powers who negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, to act.
Tehran said the latest missile tests took place on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Iran is coming under stronger diplomatic pressure after the ballistic missile tests, with the United States intending to raise the issue during UN Security Council consultations this week.
Israel strongly opposed the July deal, with Netanyahu warning that it would not block Iran’s path to nuclear weapons.
“It was in this spirit that I raised New Zealand’s concerns about the human rights situation in Iran”, Mr McCully says.
Iran has maintained that its missile program is not aimed at developing a nuclear capability. If so, Resolution 2231 – which endorsed the Iranian nuclear deal – will clearly have been violated and presumably, new sanctions imposed if the Obama administration’s promises of “snap-back” provisions made during the debate over the nuclear deal hold.
“They are longer than the distance allowed for ballistic missiles”.
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Iran last week marked Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel by shooting off two missiles, each kindly inscribed with the message, “Israel must be wiped off the Earth”, in Hebrew. Both countries have maintained the bilateral talks between Jerusalem and Ramallah are needed to reach an agreement.
