A NEW CONSENSUS on a further modest round of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear enrichment programme appears likely to see approved a US resolution proposed to the Security Council last Tuesday. Russia and China have both indicated continued support for the US move, along with France and the UK, the other veto-wielding council powers, despite Tehran’s agreement last week to a deal which would see part of its nuclear fuel shipped to Turkey for processing and then returned to Iran for strictly peaceful uses.
A senior Iranian MP warned on Thursday, however, that if the UN backs new sanctions Iran could cancel the agreement which was brokered by Security Council members Turkey and Brazil, and is broadly similar to one agreed last year with the big powers but later repudiated. Tehran would be unwise to do so. Iran’s diplomats, bluster notwithstanding, are well aware the Turkish agreement would never have been sufficient fully to allay concerns or meet its obligations to the UN.
Under the terms of the agreement with Ankara, Iran would ship some 2,640 pounds, half of its low-enriched uranium within a month to Turkey and receive back within a year enriched fuel rods for use in a medical reactor. Both this year’s and last year’s deals, then involving as much as 80 per cent of Iran’s stocks, would seriously slow down the potential development of an Iranian nuclear bomb and should help to ease regional tensions as talks on the broader issue take place. If, that is, Iran were to show a willingness to enter talks on ending its weapons programme, which it still denies, and co-operating with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is still refusing to do so. As China’s ambassador to the UN put it, the fuel swap deal “is a positive step in the right direction”.
Russia and China, anxious to maintain their relationships with Iran and Turkey and Brazil, both miffed at the slight to their initiative, are supporting the US resolution while still arguing for its dilution. It would expand sanctions against Tehran by establishing an embargo on large weapons systems such as battle tanks and combat aircraft, and by targeting financial institutions and individuals linked to the Revolutionary Guards Corps which runs the nuclear programme. It would also require countries to inspect Iranian ships suspected of carrying material for the nuclear progrmmes. But it falls well short of the US administrations objective to impose “crippling sanctions”, and may well, particularly if diluted, be supplemented by bilateral measures from the US and EU.