Tightening the screw

LESS than a year after the West tried to stage a colour revolution in Iran, yet another attempt is being made to destabilise the Islamic Republic. This time the West has got some political cover in the shape of a new United Nations Security Council resolution. On June 9, the Security Council, after months of strenuous campaigning by the United States in important world capitals, passed a stringent set of sanctions against the Iranian government. The latest resolution, which is the fourth against Iran, was passed with the support of Russia and China. These two countries have strong economic ties with Iran.

The U.S. would have liked the resolution to be passed unanimously to give it more sanctity. But with Brazil and Turkey, two elected members of the Security Council, voting against the resolution, Iran has shown to the world that it is not totally isolated. The U.S. was more successful in its last three attempts. The first two resolutions were passed unanimously by the Security Council in 2006 and 2007, respectively. The third was passed in 2008 with one abstention Indonesia.

The new round of sanctions will for the first time prohibit leading Iranian banks from doing business in the global market. Forty Iranian companies and corporations have been put on the U.N. blockade list. Fifteen of these companies are allegedly linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The resolution requires U.N. member-states to inspect ships and planes heading to or leaving from Iran if they suspect that there is banned material on board. The resolution also calls for the banning of all arms exports to Iran. It specifically bans Iran from pursuing any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

If the U.S. and its allies had their way, the resolution would have been even tougher. To bring Russia and China on board, the Obama administration had to water down its more draconian aspects. The U.S. and the European Union have, however, unilaterally decided to impose additional sanctions on Iran, two weeks after the passing of the Security Council resolution.

The U.S. announced in mid-June that it had imposed penalties on additional individuals and companies which it claimed were helping Iran build up its nuclear technology and helped Iran evade international sanctions. Big Indian companies like Reliance, succumbing to American arm-twisting, had stopped doing business with Iran even before the introduction of the latest round of sanctions. The Indian government's reluctance to pursue the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project seriously can also be ascribed to American pressure.

President Barack Obama described the latest resolution as the toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government. The Brazilian government said additional sanctions would only hurt ordinary Iranians and would play into the hands of those, on all sides, who don't want dialogue to prevail.

The resolution was tabled despite an eleventh-hour agreement brokered by Turkey and Brazil. Under the deal that was agreed upon during a meeting between the leaders of Turkey, Brazil and Iran in the third week of May, Iran had agreed to ship half of its nuclear stockpile to Turkey. Turkey was to return higher-enriched fuel rods for use in Iran's medical reactor set up to treat cancer patients.

The deal was very much on the lines of what the U.S. and its allies have been proposing for a long time. The Brazilian government has said that the deal was on the lines suggested by Obama in a conversation with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The deal did not mandate the halt of uranium enrichment by Iran as demanded by the West. Iran currently enriches uranium up to 20 per cent, far short of the 95 per cent required to make nuclear weapons. Iran says it is justified to go in for further enrichment levels so that it can make fuel for the research reactor producing medical isotopes for its cancer hospital.

Turkey and Brazil had taken the initiative to resolve the long-running crisis over Iran because they, like many other countries in Latin America and the rest of the developing world, were dissatisfied with the opaque way in which the Permanent Members of the Security Council (P-5) were conducting negotiations with Iran. Teheran, on its part, had made it clear that it did not trust the West with its nuclear fuel. The Brazil-Turkey initiative would have given the international community more supervision over Iran's nuclear programme, which the West has been demanding since the ouster of its man in Teheran the Shah of Iran. But the overseeing would have been without Western interference.

Apparently, Washington was determined to implement its long-term agenda for West Asia, which is to subdue Iran, which is among the handful of countries in the region fighting the hegemonic designs of the U.S.

Without wasting any time, the Obama administration rejected the Brazil-Turkey-Iran agreement as just words. President Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came under a barrage of criticism from the West. Washington, through its actions, has made it abundantly clear to observers that the nuclear issue is only a pretext to bring down the Islamic Republic. The Obama administration, like its predecessors, has completely ignored the existence of the only nuclear armed state in the region, Israel, while going out of its way to ensure that all other states follow Washington's diktat on nuclear-related issues.

Obama, in his remarks after the passing of the latest resolution against Iran, said the move sends an unmistakable message about the international community's commitment to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. He emphasised that there were no double standards at play. He was alluding to the widespread criticism that the U.S. adopts one set of yardsticks for its strategic partners such as Israel and another for countries that follow independent foreign policies. Obama said his administration respected Iran's rights under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to access nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Israel has not bothered to sign the NPT and has now the largest inventory of nuclear weapons in the region.

Iran has been stating from the very outset that it seeks to use its nuclear power only for peaceful purposes. Its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had in fact stated on several occasions that possessing nuclear weapons was against the tenets of Islam.

Iran's ambassador to the U.N., Mohammad Khazaee, described the Security Council's action as unrestrained and reeking of rampant double standards. He said it should have concerned itself with more important issues like the threat of use of force by the U.S. and Israel against Iran. Iran's Supreme National Security Council said the U.S. and other nuclear-armed powers had punished Iran even though it did not have nuclear weapons, while they supported Israel.

The world has never seen any Security Council resolution about the Zionist regime's proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Security Council has never wanted to investigate who provided nuclear weapons to this regime, the statement from Iran's top security body said.

Iranians have pointed out that the Security Council had failed to act on the Goldstone Report on the Israeli attack on Gaza, which contained details of Israeli war crimes and the continuing Israeli aggression against an occupied people and against neighbouring countries. The Security Council also refused to condemn the massacre by the Israeli army of peace activists carrying relief to Gaza in international waters, despite demands from the vast majority of the members.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described the new set of sanctions as a used handkerchief. He said they would not deter Iran from pursuing its legitimate rights under the NPT. In the third week of June, Ahmadinejad announced that four new reactors were to be built to expand atomic research. In one of his characteristically defiant speeches, delivered on national television, he said Iran would force the West to sit at the negotiating table like a polite child before agreeing to further talks. Iran, he emphasised, would not make one iota of concession. He also vented his anger on the big powers that let Iran down.

He was no doubt alluding to China and Russia. Russia and China had agreed to support the U.S. at the Security Council after getting assurances that the U.S. would not target their economic interests in Iran.

Russia is already threatening to break ranks with the West on the issue of imposing additional sanctions. In the third week of June, it sharply criticised the imposition of new U.S. and E.U. sanctions against Iran. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the sanctions, which were in addition to the ones imposed by the Security Council, went against the country's official stance on the issue.

The statement from the Foreign Ministry said unilateral sanctions were eroding international efforts to halt Iran's nuclear enrichment programme. Russia said the U.S. and the E.U. were now putting themselves above the United Nations Security Council with the introduction of additional sanctions. It said it was disappointed by the disregard shown by the U.S. and the E.U. and those decisions undermine the foundation of our cooperation and dialogue on ways of settlement of the situation around the Iranian nuclear programme.

Russia has also reiterated that the latest round of U.N. sanctions will not stop it from completing Iran's first nuclear plant at Bushehr, which is due to come on line in August. U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently described Russia's policy on Iran as schizophrenic.

At the same time, the Kremlin has also announced that after the passing of the new Security Council resolution, Russia will no longer be able to supply the potent S-300 air defence missiles to Iran. A deal to supply Iran with the missiles was signed in 2007.

Sanctions can hurt Iran in many other fields too. E.U. leaders are planning to impose bans on the transfer of technologies for refining and liquefaction of oil and natural gas, which is crucial for the capital- and technology-starved hydrocarbon sector of Iran. Oil and gas exports are critical to the well-being of the Iranian economy. The U.S. Special Envoy to South Asia, Richard Holbrooke, has threatened Pakistan with sanctions if it goes ahead with the gas pipeline deal with Iran.

Iran is importing one-third of its gasoline needs owing to the lack of refining capacity. The energy sector is in need of funds to modernise.

Iran's growth rate has been stagnating for some years. Last year it was only 1.8 per cent. According to Iranian government statistics, more than 10 million of the country's 73 million people live in absolute poverty. The dire situation could be further acerbated if the Obama administration goes ahead with its plans of cutting off all gasoline exports to Iran.

But Iran, too, has many cards to play. Its extensive economic links with China and Russia are factors that could help it tide over the looming threats. China depends heavily on oil imports from Iran and is the country's leading trading partner. Beijing, like Moscow, will be loath to accept any more additional sanctions on Iran.