Iran sanctions on the menu?
NEARLY six months after a US deadline for imposing stiffer UN sanctions on Iran has passed, there is still no sign that sanctions will materialise.
EARLIER this month, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki invited diplomats from the United Nations (UN) Security Council member states to dinner in New York.
The Iranian invitation, extended against the backdrop of the month-long Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty review conference, was a highly unusual gesture. While press was barred from the dinner, the invitation was assumed to be part of a campaign to counter United States-led efforts to secure support in the Security Council for a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran.
The US confirmed that it would be represented at the dinner — not by UN Ambassador Susan E Rice, but by her direct underling, Alejandro D Wolff.
“We see this as an opportunity for Iran to show the council that they’re prepared to play by the rules and meet their obligations,” an unidentified US official told Reuters before the dinner, to explain why Washington was taking part.
According to Reuters, at the dinner, Mottaki apparently did no such thing, choosing instead to reiterate Iran’s oft-repeated talking point “that it has the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy”.
There is no indication that the diplomats challenged their gracious host on this issue. Japanese Ambassador Yukio Takasu told the news organisation that the Security Council invitees were “not here to negotiate, we [were] here to exchange frank general ideas”, and added, “There was no talk about sanctions.”
Wolff declined to comment to reporters afterwards, except to say that “the dinner was very good”.
Taken out of context, there is nothing remarkable about such a seemingly benign gathering. In context, though, there is something almost surreal about it. Despite the Iranian Foreign Minister’s protests to the contrary, the evidence that his country continues to sprint towards building nuclear weapons is overwhelming and irrefutable. The only logical reason for Iran to host such a dinner would be to undermine efforts to impose new Security Council sanctions. With all due respect to the Japanese Ambassador, the time for polite diplomacy has passed: been there, done that.
US President Barack Obama took office in January 2009 touting a clear break in policy from that of his predecessor, President George W Bush.
Veteran US Middle East analyst Kenneth Katzman explained it succinctly in his April 9 report “Iran Sanctions”, compiled for the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, which briefs US legislators on current issues.
Wolff declined to comment to reporters afterwards, except to say that “the dinner was very good”.
“The Obama Administration’s overall policy approach towards Iran has contrasted with the Bush administration by actively engaging Iran in negotiations on the nuclear issue, rather than focusing only on increasing sanctions on Iran,” Katzman wrote.
Obama did not leave the matter open-ended, however. Should negotiations fail to bear fruit by September 2009, he promised, the US would resume the Bush administration’s push to impose hasher sanctions. Obama later softened that deadline to the end of that year.
Five-and-a-half months later, the US continues to encounter difficulty in imposing new sanctions in the Security Council, chiefly due to a reluctance on the part of veto-empowered countries Russia and China to agree to such measures.
China, as Iran’s largest trading partner with the most to lose from any sanctions package, has been particularly difficult to persuade to accept any new sanctions. Russia has long made it clear that it preferred diplomacy, but showed signs it might be willing to back very weak sanctions. However, the US spin, throughout this year, has been to downplay the magnitude of these obstacles.
This tack was repeated as recently as last week, when Kurt Campbell, the US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, updated The Australian on the Iran situation.
“We’re very near to the final stages of the P5 plus 1 process”, he told the paper, referring to five permanent veto-empowered members of the UN Security Council being courted for imposing sanctions, plus Germany, which is not a member of the council.
“I believe we will have China on board,” he added, neglecting to mention that the whole reason why there is an unresolved P5 “process” at all is because China, to date, is still not on board. It is important to remember that if the Chinese decide to veto, it does not matter how the rest of the Security Council votes.
Prolific Middle East analyst Barry Rubin has been an outspoken critic of the Obama Administration’s handling of Iran sanctions, particularly in the way he says it has consistently overstated the likelihood of Russia and China agreeing to new Security Council sanctions.
Last month, Rubin went so far as to accuse the US President of deliberately “misleading” the public to cover the failure of these UN overtures.
“Obama is responsible for misleading the country and making a serious error by continuing to insist that he will win [Russia and China] over, when it was clear a year ago that they are never going to support ¬≠serious sanctions,” he wrote.
Rubin added that the US had the opportunity to adapt its strategy to this reality, but did not.
“Having seen that, US policy should have adjusted either to create a coalition of the willing or to ram through the UN a reasonable plan,” he wrote.
Given Russia and China’s reluctance to join in the sanctions and the US reticence to abandon its strategy of using the Security Council as the venue for those sanctions, how does the Obama Administration intend on changing these two countries’ minds?
The answer to that can be found in the US State Department’s opposition last week to language in a current bill being worked on in the US legislature to impose stiffer sanctions on Iran unilaterally, in particular in the energy sector.
As reported in Foreign Policy magazine on May 4, the State Department is pushing to waive penalties on companies that do proscribed business in Iran if those companies are based in “cooperating countries” — which can be interpreted as countries who have supported sanctions in the UN.
This is widely seen as a way to allow Russia and China to vote for weaker Security Council sanctions in the UN, while effectively exempting themselves from more stringent American sanctions.
However, this concession plan by the Obama Administration is encountering resistance in Congress. On May 3, four Democratic and six Republican senators sent a letter to Representative Howard Berman and Senator Christopher Dodd — who chair the conference reconciling House and Senate bills on Iran sanctions — urging them to resist pressure to include the waiver in the final bill.
The very fact that Congress has taken upon itself an initiative to impose its own more stringent Iran sanctions is testament to growing frustration among Americans with their own government’s lack of progress in delivering international sanctions.
According to the American system of government, the President alone has the right to set the country’s foreign policy, but Congress controls funding and can deliver messages that the executive branch will find difficult to ignore.
Thus, the US President may find it increasingly difficult to maintain the stance often expressed by his Administration, even at this late stage, that the “door is open” for negotiations with Iran. There are growing voices among the American people, through their elected representatives, that are urging him to slam it shut, lest Tehran cross the threshold — of nuclear weapons.
AHRON SHAPIRO
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