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VOA \u2014 Iran would become the \u201carms dealer of choice\u201d for terrorists if a U.N. weapons embargo is allowed to expire, a senior U.S. official says.<\/p>\nVOA \u2014 Iran would become the \u201carms dealer of choice\u201d for terrorists if a U.N. weapons embargo is allowed to expire, a senior U.S. official says.<\/p>\n
The U.N. imposed its current arms embargo on Iran in 2010, and it is set to expire in October.\u00a0 Hook said the world should ignore Iranian threats of retaliation if the embargo is extended.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we play by Iran’s rules, Iran wins,\u201d he told the AP. \u201cIt is a mafia tactic where people are intimidated into accepting a certain kind of behavior for fear of something far worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.N. arms embargo has stopped Iran from openly buying fighter jets, tanks, warships and other weaponry. But it has not stopped Iran from sneaking weapons into such war zones as Yemen, where Iran backs the Houthi rebels.<\/p>\n
Iran has denied supplying arms to the rebels. But Hook says if the embargo expires, it may not have to use alleged smuggling as a tactic anymore. \u00a0<\/p>\n
“If we let it expire, you can be certain that what Iran has been doing in the dark, it will do in broad daylight and then some,\u201d he told the AP.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency predicted last year that Iran would try to buy Russian fighter jets, tanks and anti-aircraft missile systems if it were allowed to. \u00a0<\/p>\n
But U.S. economic sanctions on Iranian oil sales have nearly wrecked the Iranian economy.<\/p>\n
When a reporter asked Hook how Iran could pay for such expensive equipment, he said it is \u201ca good thing for the region\u201d that Iranian revenues are way down, adding that it also complicates Iranian efforts to back such allies as Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have put this regime through our strategy on the horns of a dilemma,\u201d Hook said. \u201cThey have to choose between guns in Damascus or butter in Tehran.\u201d
\n\u00a0
\nIran did not immediately commented on Hook\u2019s remarks. But Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday called 2020 Iran’s \u201cmost difficult year\u201d because of U.S. economic sanctions and the coronavirus outbreak.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VOA \u2014 Iran would become the \u201carms dealer of choice\u201d for terrorists if a U.N. weapons embargo is allowed to expire, a senior U.S. official says. The U.N. imposed its current arms embargo on Iran in 2010, and it is set to expire in October.\u00a0 Hook said the world should ignore Iranian threats of retaliation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}