US working hard to stifle Iranian arms trade

U.S. Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, made a regional tour in the past few days, aiming at preventing Iran from either importing or exporting arms.
Hook said Washington would extend its arms embargo on Iran, which should
come to an end in October this year.
He warned against Iran turning into the arms supplier favored by
terrorist organizations around the world.
Hook said the Islamic Republic follows mafia tactics and that preventing
it from buying and exporting arms would boost the security of Middle Eastern
states.
A decades-old arms embargo imposed by the United Nations on Iran
deprived the Islamic Republic of the ability to buy fighter jets, tanks and
warships.
However, the same embargo did not deprive Iran of selling and smuggling
arms to terrorist groups in war zones.
Hook downplayed Iran's threats that it will pull out of the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty, in case the United Nations Security Council extends
the arms embargo on it.
Tehran hopes that the termination of the arms embargo on it will help it
modernize its fleet of fighter jets that date back to the 1970s.
In case of an end to the arms embargo, Iran will most likely buy new fighter
jets from Russia. It may also buy the S-400 air defense system from Moscow.
Iran ran into hundreds of billions of dollars in losses because of U.S.
sanctions on it. The sanctions devastated the Iranian economy. The drop in oil
prices in the international market also compounds the effects of the sanctions
on the Iranian economy.
Hook said the drop in Iran's revenues from oil exports is good for the
region because this drop just means that Tehran would not be able to offer
support to its regional proxies.