No “Timeout” for Iran Sanctions

Western nations have expressed little interest in taking a “timeout” from pressuring Iran over its nuclear activities, a move suggested last week by top U.N. nuclear official Mohamed ElBaradei, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 29).

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, ElBaradei urged Western powers and Iran to step back from the crisis by simultaneously suspending nuclear activity and economic sanctions.

While Iranian officials said they would study his proposal, Western officials appeared to reject it in favor of the U.N. Security Council plan, which calls for lifting sanctions only after Iran freezes its nuclear program.

“If Iran verifiably suspends all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, then the Security Council will suspend sanctions,” said Gregory Schulte, U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said the council “was clear and requested Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment and related processing activities.  The resolution has been passed, and we are still waiting for Iran to comply with it” (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Jan. 29).

While appearing to be unified on this issue, the United States and European nations have disagreed on how far to pursue economic sanctions against Iran, the New York Times reported today.

The United States has pushed European countries to impose measures even stricter than those required by the Security Council resolution.

“We are telling the Europeans that they need to go way beyond what they’ve done to maximize pressure on Iran,” said a senior Bush administration official.  “The European response on the economic side has been pretty weak.”

The United States, however, has much more limited business and diplomatic relationships with Iran than European nations do, so it might be easier for Washington to impose harsher measures, the Times reported.

“We want to squeeze the Iranians,” said one European official.  “But there are varying degrees of political will in Europe about turning the thumbscrews.  It’s not straightforward for the European Union to do what the United States wants” (Steven Weisman, New York Times, Jan. 30).

Meanwhile, U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that he was working to avoid the intelligence lapses that marred U.S. assessment of Iraq’s WMD capabilities before the 2003 war.

“Look, I’m like a lot of Americans that say, well, if it wasn’t right in Iraq, how do you know it’s right in Iran?” he said in an interview with National Public Radio.  “So we are constantly evaluating, and answering this legitimate question by always working to get as good intelligence as we can.”

Bush cautioned that his recent orders to authorize U.S. forces in Iraq to fire on Iranian personnel did not mean that the United States was planning to attack Iran.

“This is the kind of thing that happens in Washington. People ascribe, you know, motives to me beyond a simple statement — of course we’ll protect our troops. I don't know how anybody can then say, well, protecting the troops means that we're going to invade Iran,” he said (National Public Radio, Jan. 29).

However, tensions between the two countries, combined with a growing U.S. military force in the region, could lead to accidental conflict, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

“A mistake could be made and you could end up in something that neither side ever really wanted, and suddenly it’s August 1914 all over again,” said a U.S. military officer in Doha, Qatar, referring to the beginning of World War I.  “I really believe neither side wants a fight.”

The officer suggested that inflammatory remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would ultimately undermine the president’s political power.

“I don’t think Ahmadinejad is very sophisticated.  He’s grossly overplaying his hand,” the officer said.  “The real power base in Iran is starting to lose interest in him.  You can see it.  We should probably let this situation develop, as painful as it can be in the short term.  I think he will soon find himself on the ledge wondering how he got there” (Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, Jan. 29).

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