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The United Nations has restored the pre-JCPOA sanctions regime on Iran after the Security Council rejected a Russia–China bid to delay it. European governments and Washington say snapback follows Iran’s “persistent and significant non-performance.” Tehran is downplaying the move; yet it was precisely this kind of Security Council pressure that once drove the regime to the negotiating table “with bloody knees,” as the state-run Resalat commentary in late 2013 put it when the Geneva channel opened. The contrast matters now: the same patterns of denial, delay, and leverage that outside revelations exposed over three decades—133 disclosures by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)—are again colliding with a rules-based response.
What has actually snapped back
As of 20:00 EDT on September 27, 2025, UN Security Council Resolutions 1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835 and 1929 are back in force. In practical terms, the Iranian regime must suspend enrichment-, heavy-water- and reprocessing-related activities; ballistic-missile work using such technology is prohibited; a conventional arms embargo is reinstated; designated individuals and entities face travel bans and asset freezes; and member states are authorized to interdict and seize prohibited cargo linked to Iran. The E3 (France, Germany, UK) underline why: since 2019 Iran “has exceeded all limits” it accepted under the JCPOA and, per the IAEA’s September 4, 2025, report, holds enriched uranium “48 times” the deal’s cap, including “10 ‘Significant Quantities’ of High Enriched Uranium”—a level with “no credible civilian justification.”
For over three decades, the ruling clerics in #Tehran, who continue to harbor ambitions of inaugurating a regional Islamic Caliphate to this day, have been desperately trying to join the #nuclear club.https://t.co/EiJenArCtm
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) April 18, 2023
The indispensable role of 133 NCRI revelations
The nuclear file did not surface because Tehran volunteered it. It surfaced because outsiders forced daylight. The NCRI’s disclosures began in 1991 and, famously in August 2002, identified Natanz and Arak—an inflection point for IAEA action that Tehran initially denied. The pattern continued through 2025, with allegations such as the Ivanaki/Semnan site.
Even regime-aligned voices now concede the impact. On April 24, 2022, former Majles deputy speaker Ali Motahari said: “From the very beginning, when we entered nuclear activity, our goal was to build a bomb… but we failed to keep it secret, and the [PMOI] exposed it.”
On Monday, August 25, Mayor @RudyGiuliani posted on X referencing Ali Motahari’s interview, acknowledging that it was the MEK who first exposed the Iranian regime’s secret nuclear weapons program. He wrote: "This interview was in 2022 and makes it clear that the Ayatollah's… pic.twitter.com/1Lqt4ZAMXC
— SIMAY AZADI TV (@en_simayazadi) August 26, 2025
Appeasement’s perverse chapter
Across the same years Europe courted Tehran over “confidence-building” steps, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK)—the NCRI’s principal component and the movement that had exposed clandestine sites—remained on UK and EU terror lists. The EU even reaffirmed the PMOI’s listing days before leading Geneva nuclear talks in July 2008, a timing Reuters flagged explicitly; only after successive court defeats did Brussels remove the group in January 2009. In Britain, judges had already forced the issue: the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission in November 2007 called the Home Secretary’s refusal to de-proscribe the PMOI “perverse,” a finding the Court of Appeal upheld in May 2008, prompting formal de-proscription the following month. The paradox was stark: the movement that had opened the file through years of disclosures was punished in Europe precisely while Tehran leveraged talks for relief.
At the same time, several NCRI-flagged sites tied to possible military dimensions (PMD) received limited follow-up. Under Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, Iran allowed only restricted, chaperoned access at the Parchin military complex in November 2005; inspectors visited selected buildings and obviously found no nuclear material there, but the Agency noted it was still awaiting additional information and clarifications—and subsequent access requests were refused. Iranian officials publicly argued that military sites were off-limits absent “concrete proof,” a position Western capitals and the Agency effectively acquiesced to in practice during that period—leaving PMD questions unresolved and reinforcing Tehran’s red line around bases.
As part of JCPOA implementation, the IAEA Board of Governors—at the P5+1’s urging—adopted a resolution on December 15, 2015, that closed the Agency’s “Possible Military Dimensions” (PMD) file on Iran, effectively ending the 12-year probe even as the Director General’s final assessment acknowledged coordinated weapons-relevant work before 2003.
A Bold Confession by #Iran Regime’s Senior Official on Their Clandestine Nuclear Projecthttps://t.co/ykyauA2eOF pic.twitter.com/v8SNgoCHnY
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) June 8, 2018
The economic ledger—and who paid
Tehran sells the nuclear program as “national pride,” but the numbers show a transfer of wealth from households to a project with no credible civilian justification. The E3, citing the IAEA’s September 4, 2025, report, say Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile is 48× the JCPOA cap and includes 10 Significant Quantities of HEU—levels they describe as having no civilian rationale, and now “entirely outside” monitoring. Meanwhile, the regime’s own officials put the economic toll in the trillions: former FM Javad Zarif said in 2021 that U.S. sanctions alone inflicted about $1 trillion in damage; the (then) head of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Hossein Selahvarzi, estimated $1.2 trillion in losses from 2011–2023. A former senior diplomat, Qasem Mohebali, is quoted this year saying enrichment has cost “close to two trillion dollars.”
These are resources that could have been invested in Iran’s oil and gas sector, its power grid and water systems, and broader economic development—crises that are now driving as much as 60% of the population toward poverty and absolute misery.
The massacre in Ashraf on September 1, 2013 was the hidden half of the regime’s retreat in the nuclear talks and the JCPOA#Iran #FreeIran pic.twitter.com/hieEjBHegK
— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) September 1, 2017
What appeasement cost, and what must happen now
A decade of indulgence toward Tehran’s brinkmanship has devastated Iran’s economy, scarred the region, and eroded global non-proliferation norms. The record is unambiguous: while the regime siphoned resources into maximum enrichment and proxy warfare, living standards collapsed at home and insecurity spread abroad. The corrective is not more “managed tolerance,” but rigorous enforcement.
As Maryam Rajavi stated, any further appeasement is no longer possible: the six UN Security Council resolutions must be applied without leniency or concessions, every circumvention channel must be shut, and humanitarian goods must remain unimpeded.
The final solution lies with the Iranian people—their right to resist a regime of terror and massacre should be recognized. That is the only path that aligns enforcement with morality: decisive implementation of the restored UN measures, airtight financial and maritime compliance, and protection of humanitarian flows—paired with political recognition that sovereignty belongs to the Iranian people, not a nuclear-extortionist state.