Russia, China's last-ditch effort to delay sanctions on Iran nixed

The UN Security Council on Friday rejected a last-ditch effort to delay reimposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, a decision that the country's president immediately called “unfair, unjust and illegal.”

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The decision on the “snapback sanctions” came a day before the deadline and after Western countries claimed weeks of meetings failed to result in a concrete agreement.

The resolution put forth by Russia and China — Iran’s most powerful and closest allies on the 15-member council — failed to garner support from the nine countries required to halt the series of UN sanctions from taking effect Saturday, as outlined in Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The vote was 4-9 with two abstentions.

“We had hoped that European colleagues and the US would think twice, and they would opt for the path of diplomacy and dialogue instead of their clumsy blackmail, which merely results in escalation of the situation in the region,” Dmitry Polyanskiy, the deputy Russian ambassador to the UN, said during the meeting.