Don't hold your breath on China's cooperation ...

DECLASSIFIED/ here

While U.S. and European officials are pleased that China has become "engaged" in United Nations Security Council discussions over new economic sanctions on Iran, their expectations are modest at best as to what those negotiations will actually produce.

The most the Security Council talks are likely to produce is "something quite limited," said a European diplomat, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive issue. Any new sanctions regime likely to meet the approval of China—a major Iranian trading partner which has long resisted the imposition of new sanctions on the ayatollah's regime—would likely be "more a political gesture" and less a series of measures likely to put a real bite on the Iranian theocracy, the diplomat said. But having China—which, as a permanent Security Council member, could veto any sanctions resolution—sign onto even a token step-up in sanctions would help to "send a message" to Tehran that even its erstwhile friends were getting fed up with Iran's intransigence and truculence in responding to international concerns about its nuclear program..........