Calamita: Sanctions, Countermeasures, and the Iranian Nuclear Issue

N. Jansen Calamita (Univ. of Birmingham - Law) has published Sanctions, Countermeasures, and the Iranian Nuclear Issue (Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 42, no. 5, p. 1393, Nov. 2009). Here's the abstract:

This article addresses a number of important international legal issues raised by Iran’s ongoing violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its Nuclear Materials Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It also offers suggestions for a legal framework in which individual and groups of states may formulate effective responses to this threat to global security in light of the ongoing difficulties in adopting effective measures against Iran at the United Nations Security Council.

The article highlights the sometimes complex legal relationship between the United Nations system of collective security – through which a number of Security Council Resolutions against Iran have been grudgingly adopted – and the rights of states to take complementary countermeasures under general international law. The article argues that while properly interpreted the Security Council’s current sanctions resolutions against Iran do not grant discretion to states to broaden the scope of the Council’s measures, states retain their rights under general international law to take countermeasures collectively or unilaterally in response to wrongful acts, such as Iran’s violations of its NPT and IAEA obligations.

The article goes on to observe that while in an ideal world the United States would wish to address the Iranian nuclear issue through multilateral institutions like the United Nations, the geopolitical divergences among the Security Council’s Permanent Members may make it necessary for the United States and its European allies to consider unilateral or collective countermeasures admissible under international law. The article demonstrates that there is a substantial body of state practice supporting the right of states to take collective countermeasures in response to violations of multilateral obligations like the NPT, and that the case for this entitlement is at its strongest where, as in the situation with Iran, the wrongful conduct has been determined by an international body (the IAEA) with responsibility for monitoring and verifying compliance with the obligations in question. Indeed, in such instances, the use of countermeasures in response to violations – far from undermining the international legal order – may serve to promote respect for the international rule of law.