Iran wants UNSC seal of approval on its peace deal with US, here’s why ratification matters world News

Last updated:June 15, 2026, 22:37 IST

Iran and the United States plan to sign a memorandum of understanding in Geneva on June 19, in which Iran will seek UN Security Council ratification as legal insurance after the failed 2015 JCPOA deal.

Iran and the United States are scheduled to sit in Geneva on June 19 to formally sign their memorandum of understanding. While one clause in the 14-point agreement may attract less attention than sanctions relief and reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, it has the potential to supersede them all in legal consequence.

Clause 13 of the MOU, as published by Iran’s state-linked Mehr news agency, calls for “ratification of the final agreement through a decision by the UN Security Council”. These two words – ratification and Security Council – are part of the vocabulary that most people rarely encounter separately and rarely together.

Here’s what they mean individually and in combination, and why Iran is seeking this particular pairing.

What does ratification really mean?

Ratification is the way a country formally says: ‘We are legally bound by it.’ In international law, ratification is the process by which a state declares its consent to be bound by a treaty. Signing a deal is a statement of intent. Ratification is agreement with the legal outcome. The difference in behavior matters a lot.

A country may sign an agreement and withdraw from it before formal ratification is completed, but once ratified, the agreement bears the full weight of the country’s domestic and international legal commitments.

The ratification process usually requires a country’s parliament or parliamentary bodies to approve the agreement, if it is envisaged in the country’s constitution. For example, in the United States major international treaties require two-thirds approval from the Senate.

In Iran, ratification goes through the Islamic Consultative Assembly and the Guardian Council. The document of ratification must be signed by the head of state, head of government, or minister of foreign affairs. Only then does it become legally effective. So, ratification is the whole journey from ‘we agree’ to ‘we are bound’.

What Iran is asking for in Section 13 goes beyond standard bilateral ratification. He wants the final agreement to be approved not only by both countries domestically, but also through a formal decision of the UN Security Council. This is a specific and important demand.

What is the UN Security Council, and what can it really do

The United Nations has many bodies, but the Security Council holds the sole authority that makes decisions binding on all 193 member states. No other UN body can compel states to act. The General Assembly can recommend, debate and condemn, but its resolutions are not binding.

The Security Council has five permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, collectively known as the P5. Any one of them can veto any proposal. Ten other members serve rotating two-year terms and have no veto power.

For a resolution to pass, it needs nine affirmative votes, and no negative votes from any P5 member. A P5 negative vote defeats a motion regardless of the position of the other 14 members. Abstinence is not a veto; The P5 abstention allows a motion to pass if nine affirmative votes are present elsewhere.

When the Council passes a resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the stakes change. Chapter VII resolutions take precedence over conflicting treaty obligations under Article 103 of the Charter and create binding obligations on all Member States under international law.

The only UN body that has the power to make binding international law is the Security Council, and this is the case only when it is acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Why is ratification through the UNSC Iran’s insurance policy?

Iran has been in this situation before and it didn’t end well. The 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was the most comprehensive diplomatic agreement Iran has reached with Western powers in decades.

On July 20, 2015, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2231 endorsing the JCPOA, with that resolution providing a legal framework for the implementation of the agreement and laying the groundwork for the lifting of UN sanctions on Iran.

At the same time, the negotiators involved created an emergency snapback mechanism: if Iran violated its commitments, sanctions could be rapidly reimposed without the risk of a veto in the Security Council.

Then the United States went anyway. In 2018, the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, reimposed sanctions and launched a maximum pressure campaign against Iran, despite the fact that the IAEA continued to certify Iran’s compliance with the agreement.

This history is the exact reason Section 13 exists. Iran’s Foreign Ministry acknowledged the clause through its spokesman Esmail Baghai, noting that if an agreement is reached, it would be formalized through a UN Security Council resolution ‘to comply with the international legal framework’.

But Baghai was also careful to add that Iran ‘does not consider the UN Security Council resolution a guarantee of any agreement’ as past experience shows that the United States has “conveniently ignored” such resolutions.

This tension is the reality that stems at the center of Volume 13. UNSC ratification would theoretically raise the political and legal costs for the US of walking away again. A future administration that withdrew from the UNSC-ratified agreement would not only be abandoning a bilateral agreement, but also disregarding international law codified by the organization it helped establish and still chairs as a permanent member.

Example: How UNSC support of the JCPOA has worked in practice

The 2015 experience provides the only real template for what UNSC ratification of the Iran-US agreement looks like. When Iran and the P5+1 reached the JCPOA on 14 July 2015, the UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the agreement through Resolution 2231.

The resolution included provisions to lift UN sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program and retain sanctions on Iranian arms sales and ballistic missile transfers for five and eight years, respectively.

Resolution 2231 also established a snapback mechanism, allowing any participating state joining the JCPOA to reimpose sanctions, without the restrictions of a veto, if they believe Iran is non-compliant. This was a designed-in enforcement clause.

However, the snapback was only in one direction: it could punish Iran, but it could not force the United States to remain party to the agreement. When the US withdrew in 2018, the UNSC resolution did not offer any mechanism to force Washington to back down. France, Germany and the United Kingdom ultimately invoked the snapback mechanism on August 28, 2025, resulting in the reimposition of UN sanctions on September 27, 2025. By then, for practical purposes, the JCPOA had already expired.

This is why Iran’s demand for UNSC ratification of the existing MOU is understandable and inadequate in itself. This raises the diplomatic stakes, but the Security Council has no enforcement mechanism to force a P5 member like the United States to abide by a resolution it later decides to abandon.

The veto power that makes Security Council resolutions so important to small states exercises no control over the permanent members.

What happens if either party blocks UNSC ratification?

A final Iran-US deal would require the guidance of all five permanent members to pass a UNSC resolution. Russia and China have long-standing strategic ties with Iran and both have opposed several anti-Iran resolutions in the council.

Meanwhile, the United States and its allies have repeatedly used UNSC mechanisms to pressure Tehran, including a snapback provision that would allow sanctions to be reimposed in 2025. The text of any final agreement coming to the UNSC for ratification will need to avoid this turbulent political geography.

Trump has indicated that he sees the UNSC-approved resolution as the final point of agreement, telling reporters that China had helped bring Iran to the negotiating table, with Turkey and Egypt also acting as mediators.

If the final agreement gets the combined support of the US, Russia and China, a route through the Security Council becomes viable. If there is any one of those three defects, the ratification clause in Section 13 becomes a crucial point that can delay or complicate the entire structure.

What does it mean to move forward

The memorandum of understanding, set for signing in Geneva on June 19, is not a final agreement. The expectation is that the deal is a memorandum of understanding followed by 60 days of negotiations toward a comprehensive final agreement.

Those 60 days are where the specifics of the nuclear file, sanctions architecture and enforcement mechanisms will be worked out. Clause 13 Tehran insists that whatever comes out of that process must go through New York and receive the Council’s formal approval.

Security Council resolutions, unlike those of the General Assembly, are binding on all UN member states. By accepting the Charter, all nations agree to accept and implement the decisions of the Security Council.

This is the principle that Iran wants to implement. Whether the binding authority of the Security Council could hold future US administrations to an agreement as currently indicated is a question that the experience of 2015 has answered with uncomfortable clarity.

However, in the absence of UNSC ratification the agreement will have even less formal protection. Iran’s calculation, shaped by that history, is that some international legal architecture is better than none.

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