Iraian President Rouhani at a rally celebrating the 1979 Islamist revolution. Photo: Screenshot.

Iran’s threat of genocide by calling for the eradication of the Jewish state of Israel could complicate the removal of certain international sanctions against the Islamic Republic, an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday revealed.

The U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide obligates signatories to prevent all forms and threats of genocide, which recent calls by Iranian military and political officials for the destruction of Israel clearly seem to contradict.

And since a nuclear payload delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles are the Iranian regime’s most logical tool to execute its apparent genocidal ambitions, lifting sanctions against its missiles program after eight years, as the recently agreed nuclear deal stipulates, without any sort of Iranian disavowal of seeking to destroy the Jewish state would appear to belie international law on preventing genocide.

Lifting U.S. sanctions against Iran’s central bank could also prove difficult, influential attorneys David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey contended in the WSJ piece, because these sanctions cannot be waived until the president has declared Iran “has stopped its ballistic-missile program, ceased money-laundering and no longer sponsors international terrorism.”

Also, while the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action struck by negotiators from Iran and world powers in Vienna on July 14 addresses concerns that local and state authorities in the U.S. could continue to impose economic sanctions on Iran, it remains unclear whether Washington could actually force all state-level sanctions to be lifted.

States have the power, for example, to prohibit taxpayer-funded public pension funds from investing in Iranian companies.