Global Security Newswire

The United States and partnered Arab and European countries have ramped up talks on sustaining the reliability of the international petroleum trade in a potential step toward a ban on business with Iran's central bank and oil industry, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday (see GSN, Dec. 16).

Washington and European capitals are moving to pave the way for possible trade restrictions targeting Iran's disputed atomic activities, according to U.S. and European government sources. Tehran has consistently denied allegations that its nuclear program is geared toward weapons development.

The government insiders said they were pursuing pledges by leading oil suppliers including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to boost petroleum shipments to the European Union and Asian states should new restrictions on business with Iran's central bank and energy sector take effect within the next several months. Countries including Angola, Ghana, Iraq and Libya have joined talks on possibly increasing their oil deliveries.

The sanctions under consideration would the harshest to date in the years-old confrontation with Iran, according to the <em>Journal</em>. The Middle Eastern state has already been hit with four U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions and a host of unilateral measures. A new blitz of punitive measures has encompassed Australia, Canada, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States.

"If properly implemented, countries will trend away from Iranian [oil] supply," said a European official involved in the discussions. "There are lots of conversations going on with Saudis at various levels on this."

Iranian petroleum sales and international power costs are the anticipated focuses of talks planned on Tuesday between delegates from 11 countries. The meeting -- set to take place in Rome -- would include diplomatic and financial officials from the Group of Seven top industrialized nations, as well as Australia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. An EU delegate is also expected to participate.

As major industrializing countries including China and India are expected not to curb purchases of Iranian petroleum, Western powers are pursuing a consensus between EU member nations and Asian powers such as Japan and South Korea to fully halt Iranian oil imports, said U.S., European and Arab government sources participating in talks on the potential sanctions. Such an agreement would reduce Iranian petroleum exports by around 50 percent and force Tehran to sell oil to China and other powers at reduced prices, the sources said. Greece, Italy and Spain are the European nations most reliant on Iranian petroleum, according to European government sources (Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 19).

Iran's top diplomat said his country is ready for "the worst-case scenario" involving new punitive measures, Agence France-Presse reported.

"We are not really worried," Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency in remarks made public on Saturday. "Appropriate responses have been prepared for the worst-case scenario, and we have devised a road map" to evade additional penalties (Mohammad Davari, Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Dec. 17).

He added, though: "We can't pretend the sanctions aren't having an effect," AFP reported.

"Wartime conditions" require significant responses, and Iran must move "as if under siege," said Yahya al-Eshaq, the chief of Tehran's chamber of trade and industry.

"The sanctions have had some  impact on the domestic economy," in part raising import expenses by 24 percent, he said (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Dec. 19).

A high-level Iranian legislator on Sunday reaffirmed a threat to prevent oil shipments by other countries through the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation to an embargo on Iranian petroleum, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The Iranian Foreign Ministry last week said Tehran had no intention to close the waterway (see GSN, Dec. 15; Xinhua News Agency I, Dec. 19).

India and Russia in a shared declaration said additional independent penalties targeting Iran could be "counterproductive," the Middle Eastern nation's Fars News Agency reported.

Backers of the potential restrictions are pursuing objectives that "could instead be realized exclusively via political and diplomatic means, through dialogue," the document states.

The two powers pressed Tehran to "follow the corresponding resolutions of the U.N. Security Council and to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as closely as possible" (Fars News Agency, Dec. 17).

Meanwhile, the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization on Thursday denied a legislator's assertion that it planned to construct another atomic facility in Isfahan, Xinhua reported (Xinhua News Agency II, Dec. 16).

Elsewhere, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday said Jerusalem and Washington are committed to preventing the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran, AFP reported.

"Our two countries clearly believe that a nuclear Iran is neither conceivable nor acceptable and we are determined to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons," said Barak, who spoke with President Obama on Friday.

"We reiterated the fact that we must not take any option off the table," the official said (Agence France-Presse III/Daily Star, Dec. 18).

Separately, Iranian media on Sunday released what was reportedly an admission of guilt by an Iranian man arrested for acting as a CIA informant, Reuters reported (Reuters, Dec. 18).

In Russia, the Federal Customs Service said its previously reported confiscation of radioactive metal headed for Iran had taken place some time previously, but it did not specify a date, the Associated Press reported.

"You can't make a nuclear bomb or dirty bomb with" the material, said Kelly Classic, a health physicist with the Mayo Clinic in the United States. Sodium 22, an isotope used in medicine, was reportedly a component of the metal.

"You'd certainly wonder where it came from and why," Classic said. "It's prudent to be a little leery considering where the person's going."

U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology radioactivity group leader Michael Unterweger said "it's really strange" that the material contained such a high concentration of the isotope. Still, if he were in Russia's position, "I wouldn't worry about it," he said (Nataliya Vasilyeva, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Dec. 16).