LONDON, 9 March 2006 — The UN Security Council will soon confront Iran over its nuclear ambitions, but winning international consensus even for “smart” sanctions could be a slow, bruising diplomatic struggle, diplomats and analysts say.
And sanctions may not deter Iran from pursuing what it considers its right to acquire atomic technology, especially if it sees them as masking visceral US hostility to the Islamic republic, rather than world anxiety about nuclear proliferation. What nobody wants, the diplomats and analysts say, is any repeat of the stifling 12-year UN trade embargo that worsened human suffering in Iraq, or any swift resort to risky military strikes on Iran’s dispersed and well-protected nuclear sites.
Simply taking Iran to the Security Council, as ordained by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after a report the UN nuclear watchdog was to send the council yesterday, is a punitive humiliation Russia and China have counseled against.
Diplomats foresee up to a year of UN verbal warnings to Iran before the council even considers any sanctions, likely to start with measures aimed at Iranian leaders and their families, such as travel bans and freezing of bank accounts. “The S-word is not pronounced here,” said an EU diplomat in Brussels. “We have had no discussion on sanctions....It’s going to be such a difficult mechanism even with other EU states.”
However, a diplomat from one of the three European Union states that have negotiated with Iran on the nuclear issue, said plans were afoot in Western capitals for eventual UN action.
First, he said, the council could issue a statement this month urging Iran to comply with IAEA demands that it suspend all uranium enrichment activities and comply with its inquiries into whether its atomic program is peaceful or not. A month or two later, the council could adopt a resolution setting a deadline for Iran to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities and ratify a protocol enhancing IAEA inspection powers. Only after that might sanctions be imposed.
The diplomat acknowledged that gaining international agreement for any council resolutions would be an uphill task.
Some analysts saw little stomach for sanctions on the world’s fourth biggest oil exporter — Iran has vowed to hit back if punished, stirring energy market fears even though any self-imposed oil export cut would slash its own vital earnings.
“Sanctions are not workable in Iran’s case because there isn’t the international consensus,” said Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Britain’s Bradford University.
He said Iran had been canny in signing or proffering huge trade deals with China, India and Russia. “None of them is going to engage in any serious program of sanctions against Iran.” Iran has long accused the world’s five original nuclear powers of double standards for ignoring their own disarmament treaty commitments and failing to penalize non-treaty members Israel, Pakistan and India for joining the nuclear club. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan predicted yesterday that Tehran would use Washington’s recent nuclear cooperation agreement with India to further its case on double standards.
For now Washington is trying to weld a consensus for diplomatic action against Iran through the United Nations — in contrast to the unilateral impulses that led to the Iraq war. “It’s a paradox that the United States is taking the lead in urging the use of the Security Council, while some who advocated this over Iraq are hanging back,” said Edward Luck, professor of international affairs at New York’s Columbia University.
