WarSclerotic

NTI: Global Security Newswire – Iran Sanctions Battle Seen Dragging Into June.

France yesterday suggested it could take months longer to negotiate a fourth U.N. Security Council resolution addressing Iran’s disputed nuclear activities, Reuters reported (see GSN, March 12).

France, the United States and other Western powers have struggled to win support from China and Russia for additional U.N. economic penalties against Iran. The West has expressed concern that Iran’s nuclear program could support weapons development, but Tehran has denied having any military ambitions for its work.

All Security Council measures require the consent of the body’s five permanent member nations: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“We are … talking and talking, trying to get an agreement by negotiation and at the same time working on sanctions. I believe that yes, before June it will be possible, but I’m not so sure,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

“Before June I hope, but who am I to hope or decide,” he said, noting that Paris had hoped to set up another set of Security Council penalties last month.

Punitive measures could hit Iranian insurance firms and financial institutions and impose new travel bans, but they would not hit the nation’s energy industry or wider economy, Kouchner said. “We are not talking about blocking the exportation (of oil products) from the Gulf of Hormuz, even if some strategic people are thinking about it. It will be simple, clear and economic.”

The European Union might consider adopting a separate set of sanctions, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said.

“Failing (U.N. sanctions), I think there is an emerging consensus inside the European Union that we will take some unilateral measures from the EU side,” Stubb said. “What those exact measures are have not been discussed in detail” (Luke Baker, Reuters I, March 14).

“I think we’ll be able to convince Russia and China and I’m quite hopeful that we’ll get something in the Security Council,” he added.

“Time is running out, so I’m sure this is going to be something, if the U.N. Security Council fails, that we’ll deal with when we have our EU foreign ministers’ meeting on [March 22],” Stubb said. “That’s when we’ll get into the detail (of possible sanctions) … There is consensus enough” (Luke Baker, Reuters II, March 13).

Asked if EU nations could come together in support of independent penalties against Iran, Kouchner said, “broadly yes, but we have to talk about what kind of sanctions. And first we should devote our strength and time to getting a resolution in the U.N. Security Council and we’re working on that.”

Washington plans to circulate a preliminary U.N. sanctions document late this month, Agence France-Presse quoted Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini as saying. The EU would probably not consider its own measures until the Security Council considers the proposed resolution, he said (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, March 14).

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was expected to make the case for new U.N. sanctions on Iran to top Chinese officials during a visit to China that was under way today, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

“Britain and China haven’t only agreed on the goal that Iran should respect the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and not become a nuclear weapon state. We’ve also agreed on the means to achieve that, which is a combination of engagement and pressure. The engagement has been on the table with Iran for some time, and they have been refusing it,” he said (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 15).

Saudi Arabia last week rebuffed reports that it had indicated a willingness to lobby for Chinese endorsement of a new Security Council resolution on Iran, AFP reported.

“This issue is not true, it was not discussed during the visit of [U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates] who was in the kingdom recently,” an official source told Saudi state media (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, March 13).

Recent announcements that several major gasoline companies would end their business with Iran have forced Tehran to fall back on alternative suppliers, United Press International reported.

“The decision by European companies and Reliance to stop supplying Iran with (petroleum products) will force Iran into secondary and less-efficient markets in order to obtain petroleum, which will increase Iran’s transaction costs,” Cliff Kupchan, an Iran analyst with the New York-based Eurasia Group, told the UAE newspaper The National (United Press International, March 12).

Meanwhile, a former high-level Pakistani official indicated in 2006 that Tehran had sought complete nuclear weapons from Islamabad in the late 1980s, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

Pakistan did not seriously consider providing nuclear weapons to Iran, two former top military officials told the newspaper (Smith/Warrick, Washington Post, March 14).

Islamabad yesterday denounced the Post report, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

“It is yet another repackaging of fiction, which surface occasionally for purposes that are self-evident,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said (Xinhua News Agency, March 15).

NATO would respond to a nuclear-armed Iran as a potential danger, the head of the military alliance told Gulf News in remarks published yesterday.

“While NATO as such is not involved in the Iran issue, we support international endeavors to find a political and diplomatic solution. But if Iran at a certain stage actually acquires nuclear capability, then we would consider it a threat against the alliance,” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

“This is also the reason we are considering the establishment of a missile defense system that we can start to deploy by 2011,” he said (see related GSN story, today; Habib Toumi, Gulf News, March 14).

In Washington, the Obama administration has yet to agree on how to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the New York Times reported Friday.

The administration has not established what Iranian achievements would constitute a “nuclear weapons capability,” creating uncertainly over what atomic progress the United States would tolerate in the Middle Eastern state, according to multiple high-level Defense Department and intelligence officials (David Sanger, New York Times, March 12).

In Tehran, the chief of staff to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed Israeli threats of military action against Iranian nuclear sites, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.

“Any allegation about attacking Iran, specially by Israel, are absurd and nonsense because if Israel dared to attack Iran, it would not wait even one hour,” Esfandiar Rahim Mashae’i said (Fars News Agency, March 13).

Iran on Saturday announced the arrest of 30 people for allegedly probing secured Iranian computer networks for information on the nation’s nuclear scientists, the Indo-Asian News Service reported. The group had ties to the CIA, according to Iranian authorities (Indo-Asian News Service/Hindustan Times, March 14)

This entry was posted on March 16, 2010 at 6:05 AM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.