Threatening 'sanctions' .... again

Tony Karon in TIME, here

"President Barack Obama spent much of his time in Asia warning Iran that his patience for nuclear diplomacy is wearing thin..... But Friday's meeting in Brussels between representatives of the group of Western powers, Russia and China that has been negotiating with Iran produced little indication that new sanctions may be imminent if Iran continue to prevaricate. The difficulty facing Washington in mustering support for ratcheting up pressure on Iran was already clear in Thursday's statement by a Russian foreign ministry official that, "As far as we know, there has been no final official answer from Tehran", and that "there is currently no discussion on working out additional sanctions against Iran." And Friday's Brussels meeting simply reaffirmed disappointment in Iran's failure to embrace the deal thus far, but reiterated the commitment of the Western powers, Russia and China to continue to engage in dialogue with Tehran.

The Russian position is technically correct: Iran hasn't formally responded, but for the Western powers, that's the whole point — the proposed deal was negotiated weeks ago with Iranian representatives in Vienna, and Iran's government was asked to endorse it within a couple of days. But the plan faced a firestorm of criticism from across the political spectrum in Tehran, prompting the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to backtrack. The aspect of the plan that most appeals to the West — removing from Iran most of a uranium stockpile that could hypothetically be turned into a weapon, and returning it in the form of harmless fuel rods — is the one that has caused Tehran to balk. Many Iranian leaders suspect the deal is part of a plan to deprive it of the right to enrich uranium on its own soil, which remains a stated goal of the U.S. and its Western allies.

Rather than reject the deal, outright, Tehran declares support for its framework, but has begun floating counter-proposals on the timing and scale of the Iranian uranium exports it would involve, aiming to avoid relinquishing most of Iran's existing nuclear fuel stock......

Hence the move to initiate new sanctions, which won't realistically be put in place until early next year. But despite White House spin to the contrary, there's little reason to believe Russia and China are more likely to back meaningful sanctions in the wake of Obama's recent meetings with Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Hu Jintao than they were before those talks. While Medvedev urges Iran to be more cooperative and warns that further sanctions may be "inevitable" if it isn't, that's the perspective of a mediator. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, still presumed to be "the decider" in Moscow, has warned that threatening new sanctions will jeopardize prospects for a diplomatic solution to the standoff, and are unlikely to work — raising the prospect of a confrontation.

China, whose own energy economy is increasingly entwined with Iran's, is even more opposed to sanctions for reasons of national interest. Neither country sees Iran as representing any kind of imminent nuclear weapons threat, ...

....... the key leaders in Tehran don't appear to feel a wall at their backs on the nuclear issue. Mottaki's insistence that Iran accepts the "framework" of the deal and Ahmadinjead's declaration last weekend that the Islamic Republic is committed to "nuclear cooperation" with the international community suggests that they know they'll have to show flexibility and deal, but they may still believe they can strike a more favorable agreement — or withstand the level of pressure the U.S. and its allies can muster in the months ahead. It's a dangerous game, but it may yet have many months to run — and its outcome is far from settled."