WarSclerotic

China yesterday brushed off pressure within the U.N. Security Council to adopt a fourth sanctions resolution aimed at pressuring Iran to halt its disputed nuclear activities, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Jan. 5).

(Jan. 6) – U.S. analysts said Iran has constructed a network of tunnels in the mountains surrounding its Isfahan uranium conversion facility, shown in 2005 (Getty Images).

The United States and other Western powers represented on the Security Council contend that Iran’s uranium enrichment program is likely to be targeted toward producing nuclear-weapon material. However, Beijing has typically been more accepting of Tehran’s assertions that its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.

China heads the council this month and — like all permanent members — has veto authority over its decisions.

“A peaceful settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic means will be the best option, and is also in the common interest of the international community because sanctions itself is not an end,” said Zhang Yesui, China’s ambassador to the United Nations (Edith Lederer, Associated Press I/Taiwan News, Jan. 6).

“This is not the right time or right moment for sanctions because the diplomatic efforts are still going on,” Reuters quoted Zhang as saying.

“The efforts aimed at diplomatic negotiations on the Iranian nuclear issue still need some time and patience,” he said, noting that representatives from the five permanent Security Council member nations and Germany would convene in January to address Iran’s nuclear work.

“Trying to bridge differences and finding a settlement through diplomatic efforts — there’s still space for such efforts,” Zhang said.

The United States expressed hope that China would alter its stance on new Iran sanctions.

“This is not a static situation,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. “Views can change” (Andrew Quinn, Reuters I, Jan. 5).

“It’s no secret that China and the United States look at the utility of sanctions differently,” Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying.

“Nonetheless, we will continue to work on this,” he said, adding that diplomatic engagement was “ongoing” (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Jan. 5).

The Security Council would probably pass no new sanctions against Iran before March at the earliest, one Western diplomat told Reuters. Other diplomats involved in the U.N. body suggested that veto holders Russia and China might not endorse a new sanctions resolution before June.

“Zhang’s remarks confirm what we’d already suspected was the case — that it’s going to take a long time to convince the Chinese,” a Western diplomat said (Quinn, Reuters I).

Meanwhile, U.S. officials and independent analysts said Iran has increasingly relied on systems of underground passages to help hide its nuclear infrastructure and protect it from possible attack, the New York Times reported yesterday.

The Middle Eastern nation’s disclosure in September of an unfinished underground uranium enrichment site at Qum prompted international concern, but it remains uncertain how much of its nuclear program Iran has succeeded in hiding from Washington and its allies. Iran has constructed a network of passages within the mountains surrounding its Isfahan uranium conversion facility, government experts noted.

Three years after it brought Iran’s nuclear activities to light in 2002, a group of Iran exiles alleged that Tehran was constructing 14 separate underground sites to carry out nuclear and missile activities. Claims by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, though, have been open to dispute.

“We followed whatever they came up with. … A lot of it was bogus,” said former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

Another expert countered that the group’s assertions are “right 90 percent of the time.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re perfect, but 90 percent is a pretty good record,” said Frank Pabian, a high-level nonproliferation adviser at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Iran’s construction of underground sites “complicates your targeting” for a potential attack, said former CIA analyst Richard Russell. “We’re used to facilities being above ground. Underground, it becomes literally a black hole. You can’t be sure what’s taking place.”

While Israel has “limited intelligence for targeting,” the United States is more capable of hitting Iran’s underground facilities in a military strike, said David Kay, a former lead inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The U.S. Defense Department is preparing a new bunker-buster bomb that could be used against such underground sites (see GSN, Dec. 22, 2009; William Broad, New York Times, Jan. 5).

Elsewhere, Taiwan yesterday announced it had wrapped up an investigation into allegations that Taiwanese companies sold sensitive dual-use equipment to Iran, Reuters reported.

The probe concluded that no illicit trade took place, said a Taiwanese Foreign Trade Bureau official.

“Unless we get a more reliable tip, from an investigation point of view, the case is closed,” the official said (Ralph Jennings, Reuters II, Jan. 6).

Still, the island’s government has required that one firm to seek permission for future exports after it transferred 108 pressure sensors to Iran in 2008, AFP reported.

The devices can measure aircraft and rocket altitude, but they cannot aid in nuclear weapons development and were not subject to any special trade restrictions, a Foreign Trade Bureau official contended (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, Jan. 6).

In the Gulf, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is expected to conduct war games on the Strait of Hormuz in late January or early February, AP reported yesterday. Iran has previously said it would cut off the strategic waterway in response to a military strike (Associated Press II/Jerusalem Post, Jan. 5).

In Tehran, Iranian leaders are seeking permission from the country’s lawmakers to stockpile additional gasoline, the Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday.

“They are bracing themselves for new sanctions,” said one analyst in Tehran.

Iran holds enough gasoline to last about two months if it is faced with a gasoline embargo. U.S. lawmakers are considering legislation that could enable the Obama administration to impose independent sanctions on firms that supply Iran with gasoline or insure gas shipments to the Middle Eastern state (Roshanak Taghavi, Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 5).