WASHINGTON, Dec 15, 2010 (IPS) – The Barack Obama administration is preparing a new batch of sanctions against Iran to be announced next [...]]]>
WASHINGTON, Dec 15, 2010 (IPS) – The Barack Obama administration is preparing a new batch of sanctions against Iran to be announced next week in advance of nuclear talks in Turkey.
Two Iran experts in Washington who are usually well briefed about U.S. Iran policy said more Iranian officials would be designated as abusers of human rights on top of eight sanctioned earlier this year. That would deny them the right to travel to the U.S. and freeze any assets they might hold in this country.
Gary Samore, White House coordinator on non-proliferation, told a neoconservative organisation, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, last week that the U.S. would “maintain and even increase pressure” against Iran so long as negotiations produced no progress on curbing Iran’s nuclear programme.
Asked by IPS if that meant new punishments before a meeting expected in January in Istanbul, Samore said, “I think it would be an important message to send to take additional measures.”
At the FDD conference, Samore made an off-the-cuff comment that seemed a bit strange. The Nation‘s Robert Dreyfuss picked up on it:
Weirdly enough, Samore’s speech followed a panel discussion by ultra-hardliners about the “kinetic option,” i.e., a military attack on Iran, and Samore said that he “agreed with a great deal of what was said, probably more than I can publicly admit to.” That’s unsettling, to say the least, and afterwards I asked Samore about it in the hallway outside. He refused to clarify what he meant—but it seemed obvious.
The FDD conference was heavily focused on ratcheting-up sanctions — it seemed a point of broad agreement among all participants.
Yet the question remains: Why now? Why push for new sanctions in the next month right before the U.S. returns to the table with Iran? Why just ahead of what one hopes will lead to a confidence-building deal?
The two-track path pursued by the administration — pressure and engagement — shouldn’t mean that the United States can’t pull back on one (pressure) for just a month in the hope that a small piece of the other (engagement) can work out in good faith.
]]>Memarian’s piece draws on Iranian sources to describe the political context of, and gauge reactions to, Mottaki’s firing and his interim replacement by Ali Akbar Salehi, until now [...]]]>
Memarian’s piece draws on Iranian sources to describe the political context of, and gauge reactions to, Mottaki’s firing and his interim replacement by Ali Akbar Salehi, until now the head of Iran’s nuclear agency.
Down at the end, Memarian speaks to the Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sadjadpour, who says the move is unlikely to affect Iran’s ongoing diplomacy with the West:
Analysts believe Ahmadinejad’s surprise move is very unlikely to affect the negotiations, as Mottaki had little say in the country’s major foreign policy positions over the past five years.
“Mottaki’s firing will have little substantive impact on Iranian foreign policy,” Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, told IPS. “The Iranian foreign minister doesn’t formulate policy. It’s the equivalent of the State Department spokesperson being replaced.”
“Salehi is much smarter and smoother than Mottaki and may prove more effective at creating divisions in the international community,” Sadjadpour added. “The Iranian foreign minister’s job these days is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. It’s ugly no matter how you try and sell it.”
I covered some other reactions yesterday — mostly speculative at this point, and unlikely to become any more certain before the upcoming round of negotiations in Istanbul next month.
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