Sanctions against Iran are a dead letter. Israeli ministers meet
DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.
Tags: Brazilian-Turkish diplomacy 
US-Iran
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs could not admit Monday, May 18, that Iran’s Brazil- and Russia-assisted ploy for shipping a portion of its light-enriched uranium to friendly Turkey to swap for 19.5 percent grade fuel had finally snatched the sanctions option – even unilateral ones – out of American hands.
Gibbs was left with gravely intoning that the US government “wished to make it clear to the Iranian government that it must demonstrate through deeds – and not simply words – its willingness to live up to international obligations, or face consequences, including sanctions.”
His words were no better than a face-saver, after Iranian, Brazilian and Turkish leaders joined hands in Tehran to celebrate their success in bringing the Obama administration’s strategy for aborting Iran’s drive for a nuclear weapon tumbling down. Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva “Lula” and Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan, backed by Moscow, had achieved this by a signing a draft agreement for Iran to export some 1,200 kilograms of its lightly enriched uranium to Turkey for reprocessing to 19.5 percent grade.
The US-led Six-Power bloc, known also as the Vienna Group, was given the sole option of endorsing the deal even though Tehran bluntly declared its intention to continue to enrich uranium up to 20 percent inside the country, in defiance of all previous UN Security Council resolutions.
Turkish foreign minister Ahmed Davutoglu said supportively that he saw no need for further sanctions against Iran. As an administration officials admitted to debkafile early Tuesday, “the international climate manufactured in Tehran had tossed harsh sanctions against Iran on the rubbish heap because there are no takers.”
The Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu convened his inner cabinet in Jerusalem Tuesday, May 18, to decide how to handle the crisis created by the Brazilian-Turkish-Iranian uranium enrichment accord.
But fact is that sanctions with real bite had never been more than a will-o’-the wisp in the first place.
For months, President Obama chased the unreachable goal of unanimous UN Security Council approval of sanctions as empowerment for tough, unilateral US and European sanctions against Iran. Russia and China had circled around the draft but never climbed aboard.
So when Vice President Joe Biden declared in the last week of April that a fourth round of tough sanctions would be in place by the end of the month – or in early May, at latest, he knew they were off the table and hoped only to calm Israel and Iran’s Arab Gulf neighbors and fend off their clamor for tangible action to stop Iran’s nuclear progress.
And US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was whistling in the dark when she warned the foreign ministers of Brazil and Turkey Thursday night May 13 that they were wasting their time if they hoped their mediation bid would have any practical impact on Tehran’s nuclear aspirations.
Both knew that Washington was being relentlessly driven back by Beijing and Moscow on a sanctions draft: US negotiators had more or less agreed on the quiet to draw its teeth by giving up on a total embargo on the sale of sophisticated weapons systems to Iran and energy expert restrictions.
The same US official admitted that restrictions on arms sales had been watered down to “very moderate” and provided no real bar to the sale of warplanes and missiles to Iran. The final blow was delivered in Tehran Monday by two non-permanent Security Council members, Brazil and Turkey, dropping out.
In Jerusalem, Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak came in for extreme criticism in military circles for allowing Israel’s hand to be held by the false prospect of painful sanctions stopping Iran’s development of a nuclear bomb in its tracks.
Barak in particular was accused of misleading the public by his constant assurances that it was up to the United States to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran and the issue was well in hand. Both knew the truth, namely that the Obama administration’s efforts to gather a coalition of world powers for the imposition of effective sanctions had never realistically got off the ground.
WarSclerotic 
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