According to the Associated Press, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said yesterday in Europe that his country wouldn’t take part [...]]]>
According to the Associated Press, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said yesterday in Europe that his country wouldn’t take part in more sanctions aimed solely at crippling Iran’s broader economy.
What’s more, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov swore off the “threat of” and the “use of force” as “effective tool(s)” against Iran.
So much for a new coalition of the willing. If the U.S. or Israel decides to go after Iran militarily, it will be like Iraq — a unilateral move largely considered illegal by the international community. Without Russia, you can count UN support unequivocally out of the question.
From the AP report, via MSNBC (my emphasis):
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “any new proposals … would basically be aimed at suffocating the Iranian economy.”
He said that “was not part of the agreement” when the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany started trying to allay doubts over Iran’s nuclear intentions with a combination of incentives and pressure.
Lavrov argued that the Istanbul meeting was “not a total failure.” And Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov also insisted that there is “very limited and fragile progress,” while emphasizing that Russia was against a nuclear-armed Iran.
“There is no alternative to further talks,” Ivanov said at a security conference in Munich. “We believe that neither stronger sanctions nor the threat of or, more than that, the use of force can be considered as an effective tool.”
(Hat tip to Dr. Walter Posch of SWP, a research institute in Berlin.)
]]>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.
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