As the
sanctions drama at the U.N. moves into what the Obama administration hopes are
its final stages, the Iranian government is busily trying to conduct its own
diplomatic outreach, including an attempt to convene an international meeting
of some Security Council members in Tehran.
U.S.
officials are arguing that after hearing Iran's pitch, those council members still
resisting sanctions -- a group that includes nonpermanent members Turkey and
Brazil -- will have no more excuse to hold up the process. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Turkish Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to make
that case Thursday morning.
"During
the call, the secretary stressed that in our view, Iran's recent diplomacy was
attempt to stop Security Council action without actually taking steps to
address international concerns about its nuclear program," said State
Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "There's
nothing new and nothing encouraging in Iran's recent statements."
A State
Department official, speaking on background basis, explained that State expects
Iran to try to convene an international meeting of sympathetic countries in
Tehran to coincide with the upcoming visit of Brazilian President Luiz
Inácio "Lula" da Silva.
"It's possible that a high-level Turkish official
might go," the official said. "We wanted to make sure Turkey understood exactly
how we view recent actions and statements by Iran."
After Lula's visit, expect the U.S. message to be: The
engagement track has all but failed.
"At that point, we'll understand what Iran is either
willing or unwilling to do, and at that point we believe that there should be
consequences for a failure to respond," Crowley said.
Iran has been stepping up its anti-resolution
diplomacy of late, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
making the rounds of relevant
countries. Mottaki even hosted
an impromptu dinner for all the Security Council members in New York
last week. (He served leftovers, Crowley tweeted.)
We are hearing that the U.S. goal is to pass a
sanctions resolution by the end of May, but most diplomats don't expect it to
get done until at least mid-June. U.S. officials are expressing increased
confidence that the resolution will pass and will not get vetoed.
"[U]nless
Iran does something significant that demonstrates that it is taking confidence-building
measures, I am very confident we will get a Security Council resolution that is
supported by the majority of the U.N. Security Council," White House WMD czar Gary Samore said Tuesday.
The so-called P5+1, the permanent five members of
the Security Council plus Germany, met in New York Wednesday on the issue.
Clinton discussed Iran with Chinese
State Councilor Dai Bingguo for more than an hour Wednesday.
"They acknowledged that good progress has been made, talked about a couple
of technical issues in the drafting of the draft resolution, and pledged that
both sides would continue to work hard within the P-5+1 to resolve remaining
questions," Crowley said.
President Obama spoke over the phone with
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
Thursday morning and discussed Iran as well. "The presidents also discussed the
good progress being made by the P5+1 towards agreement on a U.N. Security
Council resolution on Iran and agreed to instruct their negotiators to
intensify their efforts to reach conclusion as soon as possible," according to
White House readout of the call.
The way current and previous US administrations handled Iran problem does not differ in any way except the so called pragmatic precident at the helm. The rhetorical ignorance of Iran as a root of mideast policy are just there as they were in Bush era.
What US and its allies significantly lacking is power to influence any of the world countries to agree to its course which does not acknowledge the fundamental issue in mideast..regional alliances. US administrations repeatedly consider Iran as a thaw in its quest to protect allies like Israel. Now the same sanctions story is going round without realizing that it only complicate further possibilities of negotiating with Iran. It only make US look like a double standard state trying to cover its wanning influence and problems in Afghanistan. The same policies yielded nothing with North Korea which is now a nuclear state. Iran need to be dealt with negotiations and multilayered negotiations with its neighbouring states like syria to align with US agenda. By trying to play world policeman US is just giving more leverage to people like Ahmedinejad making other mideast problems harder to work out.
The sanctions lack tooth given economic interests russia and china have in the sphere as well as countries like turkey and brazil who persive it as a hasty approach. If iran is pursuing nukes ..now pushed to the wall it will definitely will have one. US is just taking one more step in loosing its stature as superpower..one that cannot be pragmatic.
Josh Rogin reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.
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