U.N. Powers Resume Iran Sanctions Talks

The five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany began discussions yesterday over a possible third round of sanctions against Iran for its disputed nuclear program, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Sept. 26).

Political directors from the China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States conferred on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly to review details of the proposed Iran sanctions resolution, officials said.

The officials planned to meet again today, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to meet in New York tomorrow with her counterparts Sergei Lavrov of Russia, Yang Jiechi of China, David Miliband of the United Kingdom, Bernard Kouchner of France and Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany (Sylvie Lanteaume, Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, Sept. 26).

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said yesterday that the discussion over Iran’s nuclear program is not “closed” as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had described it in his Tuesday address to the General Assembly, USA Today reported.

“I am sorry to tell President Ahmadinejad that the case is not closed,” he said.  “The Iranian president is badly mistaken if he thinks the international community is going to forget about the fact that his country is continuing — against the will of the United Nations Security Council — its nuclear research programs” (Barbara Slavin, USA Today, Sept. 26).

Burns said the goal for the council members’ talks this week was “to chart a way ahead, a diplomatic path forward for the rest of the autumn as we seek to continue this good cooperation internationally,” AFP reported.

"But I wouldn't anticipate concluding negotiations on a sanctions resolution,” he said.

Burns said the discussions would also emphasize the ongoing European dialogue with Iran, which the United States offered to join in May 2006 if Iran halted its uranium enrichment activities, which could yield a nuclear bomb ingredient.

“But with the failure of the Iranian government over the last year and four months to accept that offer, we have no other alternative but to continue the sanctions,” he said (Agence France-Presse I).

Rice joined in a heated exchange with Lavrov yesterday over the proposed sanctions resolution against Iran, the Associated Press reported.  Russia has questioned the value of additional sanctions being pressed by the United States.

The argument took place during a luncheon, according to Lavrov and U.S. and European officials who attended the event.  One participant at the lunch described the exchange as “very emotional.”

Lavrov later said that he and Rice debated strongly over whether to enact more sanctions against Iran when they could endanger a recent agreement with the U.N. nuclear watchdog for Tehran to share more of its nuclear history (see GSN, Sept. 12).

“We want to rely on IAEA expertise,” Lavrov said following the meeting of diplomats from the Group of Eight nations.

Burns said the lunch had included a “lengthy discussion” on Iran.

“There is a very clear tactical disagreement,” he said.  “But we are hopeful that tactical disagreement can be overcome” (Matthew Lee, Associated Press/Google News, Sept. 27).

Some Bush administration officials have expressed doubt that the United States can win approval from China and Russia for tough Security Council sanctions on Iran within the next several months if ever, the New York Times reported today.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have been using the nuclear intransigence expressed in Ahmadinejad’s U.N. address to try to convince European allies that stronger economic sanctions are the only effective means to pressure Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment.

The United States has so far relied on gradually escalating sanctions enacted both unilaterally and through the U.N. Security Council and on implicit threats of military intervention in Iran.

Still, senior officials said that Bush administration and Pentagon officials have given little support to the option of military action, although plans for an attack on Iran’s military and nuclear facilities have been formulated. 

The officials said that while Tehran knows the United States is capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, the United States would have trouble handling an Iranian retaliation that could include strikes against Israel, stepped-up attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq or destabilization of Middle Eastern governments.

It would also be difficult to prepare a military strike capable of setting Iran’s nuclear program back many years.

While some nuclear sites have been identified, such as the Natanz facility that now holds about 2,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges, the United States cannot know for sure whether secret nuclear sites exist that a military strike would miss.

Some U.S. officials have begun to speculate on how the United States could respond if Iran successfully tested a nuclear weapon or made it clear that it possessed enough highly enriched uranium to easily produce weapons.  Many intelligence analysts are most concerned about the second possibility, in which Iran would wield enough uranium to act as a strategic deterrent while remaining within the bounds of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The officials added, however, that European allies with the leadership of French President Nicolas Sarkozy have been discussing broader cutoffs of funding and equipment for Iran than any they have so far attempted.  Sarkozy took a stronger stance against a nuclear-armed Iran than Bush in his address to the U.N. General Assembly.

U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley described a new U.S.-French initiative aimed at convincing the Iranians that the nuclear program is “taking us into the ditch” by increasing pressure to the point “that they finally have to make a strategic choice” (Sanger/Shanker, New York Times, Sept. 27).

Meanwhile, Iran slammed legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday that would name Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist entity, AFP reported.

“Branding the armed forces of a U.N. member as a terrorist group is a strange and unprecedented act.  It is worthless and invalid,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in a statement.

“These kinds of ill-considered decisions and baseless acts do not help in implementing peace and security in the world,” he said.

If passed, the bill would make the Revolutionary Guard the first military branch of a state on a U.S. list of individuals and institutions that sponsor terrorism (Farhad Pouladi, Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Sept. 26).

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