UN Security Council OKs New Sanctions on Iran

UNITED NATIONS (June 9) -- After a yearlong diplomatic duel crowned with final weeks of creative arm-twisting, the United Nations agreed to a fourth round of sanctions aimed at punishing Iran for its suspect nuclear program.

As anticipated, the newly calibrated sanctions regime garnered 12 of 15 votes on the Security Council. Lebanon abstained, while Brazil and Turkey voted against the resolution. That result marked the first time since 2006 that any Security Council member voted against a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran.

The U.S. and its allies have a lively suspicion that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb, but Tehran claims its nuclear activity is for peaceful purposes.

"We are at this point because the government of Iran has chosen clearly and willfully to violate its commitments to the [International Atomic Energy Agency] and the resolutions of this council," said Susan Rice, U.S. envoy to the U.N. "Iran has shunned opportunity after opportunity to verify the peaceful nature of its nuclear program.

"In recent months, Iran has given us all more reasons, not less, to suspect that its goal is to develop the ability to assemble a nuclear weapon," she added, noting that the secret uranium facility in Qom was discovered in September.

The vote was a rebuff to efforts of Turkey and Brazil to arrange a last-minute fuel swap to head off sanctions. "We do not see sanctions as an effective instrument in this case," said Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Brazil's envoy to the U.N. "Sanctions will most probably lead to the suffering of the people of Iran and will play in the hands of those on all sides who do not want dialogue to prevail."

The U.S. and its allies faced an uphill battle to get Russia and China on their side. As key trading partners with Iran, both tend to shy away from sanctions as a matter of policy and profit. By the end of the negotiations, they managed to significantly water down some of the tougher measures the Western powers had in mind.

Turkey and Brazil expressed their displeasure over Washington's lack of support for the recently inked Tehran Declaration, which they arranged to facilitate a nuclear swap with Iran to try to stop the sanctions route. The two countries called for a "political debate" on the broader Iran nuclear situation just one day before the vote. Meanwhile, the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Russia met at a security summit in Istanbul to send a message of regional solidarity.

"We don't want any country in our region to possess nuclear weapons," said Ertugrul Apakan, Turkey's ambassador to the U.N. "We see no viable alternative to a diplomatic and peaceful solution."

Tehran has signaled that it will use Turkey and Brazil's absence from the consensus as a means to question the legitimacy of the sanctions. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already declared the Security Council as the "most undemocratic international body."

All bravado aside, Tehran realizes that fresh sanctions could hit home, and it fought hard against its passage. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki even invited the Security Council members for dinner in May.

Comparing the current sanctions regime with previous resolutions passed in 2006, 2007 and 2008, Rice said, "These sanctions are as tough as they are smart and precise." The consensus was found quickly on imposing a binding arms embargo, freezing assets and submitting cargo to inspection, but agreeing on the list of sanctioned people and companies took time.

The resolution blacklists 41 entities, including two banks and one individual, Javad Rahiqi, who heads Iran's largest nuclear research center. Fifteen enterprises of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are also named along with 23 industrial companies and three entities owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines.

Iran has threatened to end any further talks on its nuclear program and back out of the fuel swap deal it had with Turkey and Brazil if the sanctions were imposed. "We say that this opportunity will not be repeated," Ahmadinejad said, according to The Associated Press.

Speaking at the Council after the vote, the Iranian ambassador Mohammad Khazaee slammed a "few Western countries" for what he described as applying "double standards" by not acting against Israel for its nuclear weapons. At the same time, the diplomat declared that the sanctions would not have any impact on his country.

In the run-up to the vote the U.S. efforts got an additional boost from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which also voiced its fears that Iran could be trying to build a bomb and that it had enough nuclear fuel, if further enriched, to make two bombs. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna this week that "Iran is a special case because, among other things, of the existence of issues related to possible military dimensions to its nuclear program."