Sanctions without teeth: The JCPOA’s end exposes the West’s empty threats against Iran

While Tehran celebrated the lifting of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and its associated restrictions, the real meaning of the sunset clause and the ultimate fate of the sanctions regime depend not only on a legal ruling but on the willingness of the powers to enforce the rules they themselves set and here lies the crucial difference: however strong the sanctions or the snapback mechanism may be, they are politically (and perhaps legally) worthless without enforcement by law-enforcement bodies and civil-society actors.

That is why a civilian task force on the issue is essential.

The agreement’s lapse carries immediate and long-term consequences for Iran. From the Iranian regulatory perspective, the expiration of Resolution 2231 means that the Iranian nuclear file has been officially removed from the Security Council’s agenda and the restrictions on uranium enrichment have been lifted. That allows Iran to declare that it is no longer bound by the agreement’s conditions and to exercise sovereign rights over a nuclear program. In addition, the expiration does not de facto cancel the snapback mechanism because the mechanism was activated prior to the agreement’s expiration.

Unsurprisingly but with unusual timing, the subject of economic-enforcement warfare rises to the headlines in this context as the only current option to fight the Iranian regime, whether directly or indirectly and therefore enforcing the mechanism becomes critically important in the coming year.

Thus, within the context one can also link the Ship Act, which sharpens economic warfare against Iran regarding oil sales to China and the U.S. attempt to reduce that activity, and also the U.S. sanctions mechanisms under OFAC.

But in both cases as with the Snapback if the compliance officer at a European bank does not know how to apply the sanction, freeze the bank account, and document the suspension for the regulators, the mechanism and the sanctions are not meaningful.

That said, from the Iranian regulatory side they long ago understood the power of a financial regulatory system that complies with anti-money-laundering rules, and in the past year they ratified the Palermo Convention against money-laundering in an attempt to exit the FATF blacklist, a move that failed. In this context it is important to note that despite that (failed) effort, Iran’s willingness to continue moving substantial funds through shadow banking and to sell oil via the Iranian shadow fleet should be seen as the regime’s genuine intent to continue financing Shiite-axis activities and to resist, they claim, Western demands.

From here the central insight sharpens: sanctions, even when legally binding under Security Council resolutions are meaningless without effective enforcement. Strategically, the right approach is to generate collective enforcement by UN member states, but that is unlikely to materialize. In light of the new diplomatic void created by the agreement’s expiration and the completion of the Snapback process, the international community has been left without an active diplomatic framework and without a guaranteed multilateral deterrent. Tactically, this means there is a need for a civilian enforcement mechanism, modeled on the U.S. task force, to produce robust, massive enforcement against actors circumventing the sanctions, so that a compliance officer at a bank or a shipping officer at a maritime carrier will be deterred from aiding the Iranian regime whether knowingly or by turning a blind eye.

Activating the snapback mechanism was a legal success, but its practical impact the day after the agreement’s expiration remains the same immutable truth: the effectiveness of sanctions depends solely on the willingness to enforce them. If the powers continue to prioritize economic interests or geopolitical considerations over vigorous economic enforcement, any UN sanctions apparatus whether annulled or reinstated will remain toothless and will leave diplomacy paralyzed in the face of the advancing Iranian nuclear program.

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Ella Rosenberg is senior expert at the JCFA and Dvorah Forum member

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