AMMAN: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Monday that tough sanctions will follow if Tehran fails to respond to Washington’s offers of dialogue on its controversial nuclear program. He added that in such an event Washington would “try to get international support for a much tougher position.”
Iran is already subject to three sets of UN sanctions following its refusal to heed repeated ultimatums from the Security Council to halt sensitive nuclear work.
In the Jordanian capital on a Middle East tour, Gates stressed that Washington’s preferred option remained a negotiated resolution of Western suspicions that Iran’s civilian nuclear program is cover for a weapons drive, something that Tehran strongly denies. “Our hope still remains that Iran will respond to the president’s outstretched hand in a positive way but we will see,” he said.
Gates arrived in Jordan from Israel whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has made plain he regards Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs are a threat to his country.
At a press conference in Jerusalem earlier with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak, Gates said Washington is hoping for a response from Tehran by September to overtures on its nuclear drive.
Israel made clear its own intense concern over Iranian ambitions. “Israel remains in its basic position that no options should be removed from the table, despite the fact that at this stage a priority should be given still to diplomacy and sanctions,” Barak said. Israel has the Middle East’s sole, if undeclared, nuclear arsenal but Netanyahu has said that any move by Iran to match it would be the greatest threat to the Jewish state in its 60-year history. In 1981, Israel sent warplanes to destroy the French-built Osirak reactor in Iraq, which it feared might give now-executed President Saddam Hussein’s regime a nuclear capability.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy said that Washington is not asking any Arab country to immediately achieve full normalization with Israel, but that this will come during the peace process.
George Mitchell said after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo that this normalization “will come further down the road in the process.” Mitchell said he plans to meet many Arab leaders “to encourage them to take genuine steps toward normalization” of ties with Israel. He also asked Palestinians to “refrain” from “words or actions that might make meaningful and productive negotiations impossible.”
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said after a meeting with Mitchell: “The Arabs will not take any step of normalization as a sacrifice for Israel. There will be no Arab steps before Israel stops its policy of settlement building.”
