US, Europe step up pressure on Iran

[Antid Oto]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

US, Europe step up pressure on Iran
By Patrick Martin
4 September 2009

The United States and the three main European powers, Britain, France
and Germany, are stepping up their demands on Iran to curtail its
nuclear research and development program in advance of a September 23
deadline, which coincides with the opening of the annual meeting of
the United Nations General Assembly.

Foreign policy officials from the four countries, together with
representatives of China and Russia, met Wednesday in Frankfurt,
Germany, and issued a statement demanding that Tehran respond to
offers of trade and financial incentives in return for suspension of
its uranium enrichment program.

The group of six, comprising the five permanent members of the
Security Council plus Germany (hence the informal name P5+1), has
conducted three years of on-and-off negotiations with Iran over its
nuclear program, which the US and Europe claim is aimed at building an
atomic weapon. The UN Security Council has adopted three rounds of
economic sanctions against Iran over the same period of time.

Volker Stanzel, political director of the German Foreign Ministry,
issued the joint statement on behalf of the six participating
countries, calling on Iran to “be aware of the urgent need to restore
confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program
through full cooperation with the international community.”

Officials of the US and the three European powers pushed for a sharper
criticism of Iran’s response to the last statement issued by the P5+1
group in April, but they encountered resistance from both Russia and
China, which oppose the expansion of US influence in the oil-rich
Persian Gulf region, and have extensive commercial relations with Tehran.

The impetus for a harder line against Iran has come primarily from the
European powers, particularly Germany. On Monday, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel said that the September deadline for progress in
negotiations on the nuclear program was “very serious.” Merkel met
with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French
President Nicolas Sarkozy in the run-up to the Frankfurt meeting.

At a press conference with Netanyahu, Merkel called for economic
sanctions “in the energy, financial and other important sectors” if
Iran did not comply with Western demands, adding, “We will not only
have to think about [sanctions], but discuss within the international
community how to enforce them.” At a joint appearance with Merkel,
Sarkozy declared, “Germany and France will be united in calling for a
strengthening of sanctions.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that no additional sanctions
would be needed if Russia and China would cooperate in implementing
the existing ones. “Russia and China are absolutely essential in
this,” he said. “What we have to do is work much more closely with
Russia and China to convince them to share our perception on the
necessity to really act on this issue.”

In an effort to deflect this renewed pressure, Iran’s top nuclear
negotiator, Saeed Jalili, said Monday that Iran has made a new offer
of talks on the nuclear issues, although he gave no details. While US
and European officials dismissed the statement, made on Iranian
television, it apparently served its purpose, giving China and Russia
a basis for opposing any stronger statement from the P5+1.

The US State Department said that any new Iranian proposal would be
treated “seriously” but that none had yet been received. President
Obama sent a letter to the Iranian government in April offering direct
talks without preconditions, with an informal deadline of September
15, one week before the General Assembly meeting. There were
unconfirmed reports from Iran that Obama sent a second letter to Iran
in August reiterating the offer.

Stanzel of the German foreign ministry responded to Jalili’s
statement, saying that Iran had only until the September 23 deadline
to actually begin a new round of nuclear talks. This was followed by
an Iranian declaration that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would travel
to New York to deliver a speech to the General Assembly on that date.
This would be his first major foreign trip since his contested
reelection last June 12.

Ahmadinejad dismissed the threat of new sanctions, declaring, “No one
can impose any sanctions on Iran any longer,” according to the
official IRNA news agency. Iran’s representative at the International
Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said that any new talks
with the P5+1 group would not be about the nuclear program, but about
broader security issues. “Iran’s nuclear issue can only be examined at
the IAEA,” he said.

The IAEA, or International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body
charged with monitoring compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty, has largely rebuffed the US-Israeli campaign against Iran. In
a report issued August 28, the agency confirmed that Iran has not
suspended its uranium-enrichment activities—which are perfectly legal
under the non-proliferation treaty—but urged Iran to provide new
assurances that these activities were not directed towards building a
nuclear bomb.

Iran reached an agreement last month with the IAEA to allow inspectors
to return to its heavy water plant near Arak, which is under
construction, and to increase camera monitoring at its main nuclear
facility at Natanz.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the outgoing director general of the agency, flatly
declared that claims of an Iranian nuclear threat had been
exaggerated. He told the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that
despite the lack of evidence of a nuclear weapons program, “somehow,
many people are talking about how Iran’s nuclear program is the
greatest threat to the world. In many ways, I think the threat has
been hyped.”

The increased diplomatic activity takes place against a background of
threats by Israel of military strikes against Iran’s nuclear
facilities, backed by increasingly strident rhetoric from right-wing
neo-conservative circles in the United States, as well as sections of
the Obama administration itself.

Both Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton have suggested a more aggressive stance against Iran than
Obama’s rhetoric might indicate. Biden said that the US could not
prevent an Israeli attack—a factually ludicrous assertion, since any
air strike would have to pass through US or NATO-controlled airspace,
either in Turkey, Iraq or the Persian Gulf.

The usual editorial voices of the ultra-right, like the Wall Street
Journal editorial page, and former Bush administration UN Ambassador
John Bolton, have openly called for US-backed Israeli air strikes,
while denouncing Obama’s fig leaf of diplomacy as a postponement of
the inevitable confrontation.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/iran-s04.shtml

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********