Iran sanctions are last resort, face lengthy process

By JT Nguyen May 18, 2010, 22:18 GMT

New York - Pressure on Iran to dismantle its nuclear enrichment programme grew Tuesday with agreement among the major nuclear powers on a new set of sanctions.

The draft resolution was submitted to the UN Security Council just a day after Iran's last-ditch attempt to avoid such a measure by signing an agreement with Turkey to swap its low-enriched uranium for civilian nuclear fuel.

The draft, announced by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington, was to be circulated among the council's other 14 members, three of whom are openly against sanctions.

Clinton said that Russia, China, Britain and France had agreed to the draft, which she said would put more pressure on Iran to disclose its full range of nuclear activities.

But just because there is agreement among the five veto-wielding nuclear powers on the council - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - does not mean automatic adoption by the 15-member panel.

The draft resolution will follow a lengthy procedure, usually behind closed doors. Assuming that it has the support of all five permanent members, those members will have to sell it to the other 10 elected members.

In 2006, for example, it took two to three months for the council to adopt the first round of sanctions against Iran.

Turkey and Brazil have publicly opposed sanctions and believe more diplomacy can resolve the dispute. Their leaders were in Tehran Sunday and Monday and persuaded Iran to agree to a uranium swap in a last ditch effort to avoid a sanctions resolution.

Lebanon, another rotating member of the Security Council, has also been sceptical of sanctions and as current president of the council could at least slow down a vote on the resolution.

China and Russia supported the three previous sanctions resolutions against Iran, closing ranks with the US, France and Britain on nuclear issues after Iran defied calls to suspend its uranium enrichment programme.

US President Barack Obama has spent months bringing first Russia, and then China, on board for the new proposed round of sanctions.

Although only nine votes are needed to enact the resolution, the United States and its partners will want broad support on the measure to send a strong signal to Iran. The other elected council members are Austria, Japan, Mexico, Uganda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gabon and Nigeria.

Iranian officials have spent the past two months visiting the capitals of the rotating members to try to convince them to reject the sanctions negotiated by the five permanent members along with Germany.

UN sanctions have become more and more unpopular because they often fail to make a government change its policies. They have tended to be more finely focussed after the UN realized the harm inflicted on populations by broader economic measures, as they did in Iraq in the 1990s when the world boycotted Iraq's energy exports.

The three rounds of UN sanctions since 2006 have not deterred Iran's nuclear ambitions. Iran has been able to obtain thousands more centrifuges for enriching uranium despite a ban on nuclear material exports to Iran and a freeze of assets of some Iranian individuals engaged in nuclear activities.

Tehran insisted Monday, after signing the deal with Turkey, that it had met a condition demanded by the international community to ship its enriched uranium to a third country in return for nuclear fuel strictly for peaceful purposes.

While Iran was to send the details of the deal to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that Tehran still has to meet UN Security Council's current demands, which include suspension of all uranium enrichment.

The latest round of Iran sanction discussions began in March after Iran was found to have achieved uranium enriched at 20 per cent. The international community is worried Iran is using its civilian nuclear programme to mask efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

While details of the draft were not yet known, there are some indications of what it won't contain. Since March, Washington has backed down from measures that would have choked off Iran's access to international banks and capital markets, which it badly needs to support expensive nuclear technology.

Other measures considered and dropped apparently included an energy embargo and closing of international shipping lines and airspace to Iran.

Those measures would have no chance to be passed by the council, particularly by countries like China, which has heavily invested in Iran's rich natural resources to support its own economic development.