WASHINGTON — The United Nations nuclear agency blasted Iran
in a resolution Friday for obstructing investigations into its suspected
nuclear weapons program and demanded that the Islamic Republic stop enriching
uranium at a once-secret facility.
In response, the Obama administration suggested that world
powers might be moving closer to imposing international sanctions on Iran.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called a 25-3 vote on the resolution
by the International Atomic Energy Agency “overwhelming” and said it
“demonstrates the resolve and unity of the international community with
regard to Iran’s nuclear program.”
“Our patience and that of the international community
is limited, and time is running out,” Gibbs said. “If Iran refuses to
meet its obligations, then it will be responsible for its own growing isolation
and the consequences.”
On Thursday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the outgoing head of the
IAEA, issued an unusually blunt public statement, saying that Iran has refused
to give his investigators information about its efforts to design a nuclear
weapon and that the agency’s efforts to discover the truth had
“effectively reached a dead end.”
Although it can be difficult to distinguish Iran’s bottom
lines from its bargaining positions, Tehran’s refusal to carry out a tentative
deal in October to ship most of its nuclear fuel to Russia and France for
reprocessing leaves other nations with two ways to try to ensure that Iran
doesn’t obtain nuclear weapons: tough sanctions and pre-emptive military
action.
Israeli officials have said that they consider a
nuclear-armed Iran an existential threat, and Israel crippled Saddam Hussein’s
nuclear program with an airstrike in 1981. However, it isn’t clear whether —
without U.S. assistance — Israel’s military could deal a comparable blow to
Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are farther away, more spread out and deeply
buried.
It also remains unclear how far China and Russia, which
joined in support of Friday’s resolution but have scuttled past attempts to
sanction Iran, would go now — or whether sanctions could curb Iran’s nuclear
activities.
Two senior Obama administration officials who spoke Friday
from Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered, emphasized that any decision on
sanctions is weeks away.
As for China and Russia, “We intend to take this very
steadily,” said one of the officials, both of whom spoke only on the
condition of anonymity as a matter of administration policy. However, “I
think their commitment is clear.”
This was the IAEA’s first such vote against Iran in nearly
four years. Cuba, Malaysia and Venezuela voted no, and six nations abstained.
Gary Sick, a Columbia University expert on Iran who once
served on the staff of the National Security Council, said the vote could be
significant enough to convince Iran to return to the table for renewed talks,
despite a defiant initial response.
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“I think the Iranians will hear this very clearly, the
fact that both the Russians and Chinese voted yes, that you can’t just count on
them to be your perpetual supporters,” Sick said. “It’s conceivable
they might come back with a counteroffer of some sort. I hope very much that
this will lead to another round of discussions.”
However, Sick said, “The vote by the Russians and the
Chinese should not be taken as an indicator they’re now prepared to go to
really severe sanctions.”
Even if they are, and if all five permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council plus one — Britain, China, France, Germany,
Russia and the U.S. — do agree to any sanctions, Sick predicted that it
“will after a lot of negotiation turn out to be a tightening of the
financial screws. And if it’s simply a tightening of the financial screws, I
don’t think it will make much difference. In other words, the bark is much worse
than the bite.”
“The Iranians don’t like sanctions and they also don’t
like being singled out for public criticism,” Sick said. “That
doesn’t mean they’re going to turn around and change their whole policy.”
During a meeting with six world leaders Oct. 1 in Geneva,
Iran agreed to open its once-secret facility in Qom to IAEA inspectors and to
send its partially enriched uranium from a Tehran nuclear reactor to France and
Russia to be turned into fuel for medical research. So far, though, it’s
refused a follow-up meeting.
Iran maintains that its nuclear program is peaceful in
nature, despite its secretive attitude and hostility toward Israel. The Iranian
Foreign Ministry spokesman said Friday through the Islamic Republic News Agency
that the IAEA resolution was “showy” and “vain.”
One U.S. senior official said that any sanctions that might
be considered would look to hurt the Iranian regime, not everyday Iranians, but
he didn’t elaborate.
The administration said that Iran had until the end of the
year to engage cooperatively; after that it may face a “package of
consequences.”
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
