UN imposes 'snapback' sanctions on a hungrier, poorer and more anxious Iran

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Nations reimposed sanctions on Iran early Sunday over its nuclear program, further squeezing the Islamic Republic as its people increasingly find themselves priced out of the food they need to survive and worried about their futures.

The sanctions will again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran, and penalize any development of Iran’s ballistic missile program, among other measures. It came via a mechanism known as “snapback,” included in Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and comes as Iran's economy already is reeling.

Iran's rial currency sits at a record low, increasing pressure on food prices and making daily life that much more challenging. That includes meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table.

Meanwhile, people worry about a new round of fighting between Iran and Israel — as well as potentially the United States — as missile sites struck during the 12-day war in June now appear to be being rebuilt.

Activists fear a rising wave of repression within the Islamic Republic, which already has reportedly executed more people this year than over the past three decades.

Sina, the father of a 12-year-old boy who spoke on condition that only his first name be used for fear of repercussions, said the country has never faced such a challenging time, even during the deprivations of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and the decades of sanctions that came later.

“For as long as I can remember, we’ve been struggling with economic hardship, and every year it’s worse than the last,” Sina told The Associated Press. “For my generation, it’s always either too late or too early — our dreams are slipping away.”

Snapback was designed to be veto-proof at the U.N. Security Council, meaning China and Russia could not stop it alone, as they have other proposed actions against Tehran in the past. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called them a “trap” for Iran on Saturday.

France, Germany and the United Kingdom triggered snapback over Iran 30 days ago for its further restricting monitoring of its nuclear program and the deadlock over its negotiations with the U.S.

Iran further withdrew from the International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring after Israel’s war with the country in June, which also saw the U.S. strike nuclear sites in the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, the country still maintains a stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90% — that is largely enough to make several atomic bombs, should Tehran choose to rush toward weaponization.

Iran has long insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though the West and IAEA say Tehran had an organized weapons program up until 2003.

The three European nations on Sunday said they “continuously made every effort to avoid triggering snapback." But Iran “has not authorized IAEA inspectors to regain access to Iran’s nuclear sites, nor has it produced and transmitted to the IAEA a report accounting for its stockpile of high-enriched uranium.”

Tehran has further argued that the three European nations shouldn’t be allowed to implement snapback, pointing in part to America’s unilateral withdrawal from the accord in 2018, during the first term of President Donald Trump’s administration.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the three European nations for “an act of decisive global leadership” for imposing the sanctions on Iran and said “diplomacy is still an option.”

“For that to happen, Iran must accept direct talks," Rubio said.

However, it remains unclear how Tehran will respond Sunday.

“The Trump administration appears to think it has a stronger hand post-strikes, and it can wait for Iran to come back to the table,” said Kelsey Davenport, a nuclear expert at the Washington-based Arms Control Association. “Given the knowledge Iran has, given the materials that remain in Iran, that’s a very dangerous assumption.”

Risks also remain for Iran as well, she added: “In the short term, kicking out the IAEA increases the risk of miscalculation. The U.S. or Israel could use the lack of inspections as a pretext for further strikes.”

The aftermath of the June war drove up food prices in Iran, putting already expensive meat out of reach for poorer families.

Iran's government put overall annual inflation at 34.5% in June, and its Statistical Center reported that the cost of essential food items rose over 50% over the same period. But even that doesn't reflect what people see at shops. Pinto beans tripled in price in a year, while butter nearly doubled. Rice, a staple, rose more than 80% on average, hitting 100% for premium varieties. Whole chicken is up 26%, while beer and lamb are up 9%.

“Every day I see new higher prices for cheese, milk and butter," said Sima Taghavi, a mother of two, at a Tehran grocery. “I cannot omit them like fruits and meat from my grocery list because my kids are too young to be deprived.”

The pressure over food and fears about the war resuming have seen more patients heading to psychologists since June, local media in Iran have reported.

“The psychological pressure from the 12-day war on the one hand, and runaway inflation and price hikes on the other, has left society exhausted and unmotivated,” Dr. Sima Ferdowsi, a clinical psychologist and professor at Shahid Beheshti University, told the Hamshahri newspaper in an interview published in July.

Iran has faced multiple nationwide protests in recent years, fueled by anger over the economy, demands for women's rights and calls for the country's theocracy to change.

In response to those protests and the June war, Iran has been putting prisoners to death at a pace unseen since 1988, when it executed thousands at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights and the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran put the number of people executed in 2025 at over 1,000, noting the number could be higher as Iran does not report on each execution.

Vahdat reported from Tehran, Iran. Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.

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Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/

A woman sits in the al fresco dining area of a cafe at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street, in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People walk on a sidewalk at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street, in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Two women walk past a huge banner showing the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020, and two late Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah, center, and Hashem Safieddine, who were killed in Israeli airstrikes in 2024, at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) square, in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

A domestically-built missile "Khaibar-buster," and banners showing portraits of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, and the late armed forces commanders, who were killed in Israeli strike in June, are displayed in a military exhibition commemorating the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war, and 12-day war with Israel in June, at Baharestan Square, in Tehran, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People walk past a domestically-built missile "Khaibar-buster," and banners showing portraits of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, and the late armed forces commanders, who were killed in Israeli strike in June, displayed in a military exhibition commemorating the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war, and 12-day war with Israel in June, at Baharestan Square in Tehran, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV has taken his biggest step yet to correct one of Pope Francis’ more problematic financial moves, canceling a special Holy See fundraising commission that was announced under questionable circumstances while Francis was hospitalized.

Leo on Thursday formally suppressed the fundraising commission, abrogated its statutes and fired its members. He decreed that its assets would go to the Holy See as a whole, and that the Vatican patrimony office would oversee the commission’s extinction.

A new working group would be formed, with papally approved members, to come up with fundraising proposals and an appropriate structure going forward, the decree said.

The decree was the latest sign that as 2025 comes to an end, history's first American pope is wrapping up the loose ends of Francis' pontificate. Leo is correcting problems as needed and fulfilling Francis' Holy Year obligations as he looks ahead to the new year when he can focus more on his own agenda.

The Vatican had announced the creation of the commission, its statutes and members on Feb. 26, while Francis was in the hospital battling double pneumonia. At the time, he was being visited by the top officials of the Secretariat of State.

The commission included only Italians with no professional fundraising experience. Its president was the assessor of the Secretariat of State, the very same Vatican office that Francis had previously stripped of its ability to manage assets after it lost tens of millions of euros in a scandalous London property deal.

The concentration of financial power back in the Secretariat of State, the lack of qualified fundraisers and absence of any Americans on the board — U.S. Catholics and dioceses are the biggest donors to the Vatican — immediately raised questions about the commission’s credibility.

To some, it smacked of the Italian-led Secretariat of State taking advantage of a sick pope to announce a new flow of unchecked donations into its coffers after Francis took its 600 million-euro ($684 million) sovereign wealth fund away and gave it to another office to manage as punishment for the London fiasco.

The decree by the American pope thus appears to be an effort to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. Donations are a crucial source of revenue to the Holy See and wealthy American donors in particular had been looking to Leo, the American math major pope, to impose greater financial transparency and accountability on the Vatican's books.

Leo’s move comes on top of recent good financial news from the Vatican’s economy ministry, which last week reported the Vatican’s structural deficit had nearly been halved in 2024, from 83 million euros ($96.6 million) to 44 million euros ($51.2 million).

The Holy See ended 2024 with a surplus of 1.6 million euros ($1.8 million), up from a deficit of 51.2 million euros ($59.6 million) the previous year, according to the 2024 consolidated financial statement.

External donations to the Holy See increased significantly after a long period of decline, reaching 237.6 million euros ($276.6 million), up some 20 million euros ($23.2 million) from the previous year, the statement said. That extra revenue, plus better performance at Vatican-run hospitals and the Vatican’s commercial real estate, boosted revenue by 79 million euros ($91.9 million).

Personnel and administrative costs rose 6%, but the report attributed the rise mostly to increased spending for real estate maintenance. Because of its cash crunch, the Vatican has struggled for years to fund the necessary investments in its vast real estate portfolio to be able to command higher rents.

The Association of Lay Vatican Employees, the closest thing the Holy See has to a labor union, expressed skepticism at the report’s positivity and asked for further information, including about the status of the Holy See’s pension fund, which was so underfunded that Francis warned it required serious reforms to be able to meet its obligations.

Francis, who was elected on a mandate to reform the Vatican's finances, had made significant strides in cleaning up the Vatican's murky books, imposing new accounting and transparency standards on the oftentimes reluctant Holy See bureaucracy during his 12-year pontificate.

Leo inherited the structural deficit and pension fund shortfall, but says they're not nearly as bad as believed and that Francis had put in place the necessary starting blocks on which to build.

“I’m not saying we can relax and say the crisis is over,” Leo told Crux in an interview over the summer. “I don’t think the crisis is over, I think we have to continue to work on this. But I’m not losing sleep over it, and I think that it’s important that we communicate a different message."

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope Leo XIV delivers his speech during a farewell ceremony at the Beirut International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 12025. (Andreas Solaro/Pool Photo via AP)

Pope Leo XIV gestures as he boards a flight back to the Vatican after his visit to Lebanon at Beirut International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Pope Leo XIV talks to reporters aboard an airplane as he returns from a six-day visit to Turkey and Lebanon, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. (Alessandro Di Meo/Pool Photo via AP)