U.S. Urges Tough Nuclear Diplomacy Against Iran

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today urged the international community to take tough diplomatic action to pressure Iran to halt its controversial nuclear activities, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Sept. 18).

“We believe that the diplomatic track can work but it has to work both with a set of incentives and a set of teeth,” Rice said following remarks made on Sunday by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner about a possible “war” with Iran.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday that U.S. officials are drafting a sanctions resolution that the U.N. Security Council plans to review on Friday.

“What we’re doing is working on the elements of a resolution,” he said.  “We put down on paper some of those ideas … what a resolution might look like.”

Rice is expected to attend a Sept. 28 discussion on Iran in New York with her counterparts from China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom.

So far, the U.N. Security Council has enacted three resolutions against Iran.  The resolutions, which include two sets of sanctions, were approved because of the country’s refusal to halt its uranium enrichment, which could yield a nuclear bomb ingredient.  Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is intended solely for power production.

“We hope that these meetings and any intervening discussions will move the ball forward,” McCormack said.  “The process hasn't moved as quickly as we would have liked, but that is par for the course with the Security Council resolutions” (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Sept. 19).

Rice also warned International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei not to intervene in diplomacy after ElBaradei urged countries not to take premature military action against Iran, AFP reported.

“Let me just start with the fact that IAEA is not in the business of diplomacy,” Rice said.

“The IAEA is a technical agency that has a Board of Governors of which the U.S. is a member,” she said (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Sept. 18).

Meanwhile, U.S. Adm. William Fallon has urged Arab nations to unite against Iran to restrict what the United States considers the region’s greatest potential destabilizing force, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

The highest ranking U.S. Central Command said during his current 10-day trip across the Gulf that Middle East leaders should put more pressure on Tehran.

Fallon said “we are not looking for a new NATO-type alliance against Iran,” but the United States wants Iran to look to its Middle East neighbors and “see a group united in response to Iranian hegemonic behavior.”

Some of the region’s smaller nations, such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, have significant cultural, economic and historical ties to Iran and expect to depend on the country for oil as their own supplies run out in future years.  Many are also concerned that they could anger local Shiite Muslim communities by confronting Iran, which is predominantly Shiite.

Saudi Arabia, however, has expressed concern about Iran extending its influence by building links to Shiite communities in Iraq and other Sunni-dominated nations (Brian Murphy, Associated Press/Google News, Sept. 18).

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