06/09/2013 00:00
TW
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by RAY FLEMING
SANCTIONS? What sanctions? Now that the United States has got the “No” answer from Iran that it expected and probably wanted, the issue returns to the UN Security Council to decide what to do about Iran's refusal to agree to suspend its programme of uranium enrichment. The US wants the Council to impose sanctions on Iran but two of its veto-bearing permanent members, China and Russia, have already made clear that they do not think sanctions are the answer to this problem and that, in any case, they do not share America's assessment of its urgency.

The possible sanctions envisaged by the United States, Britain and France would begin with low-impact measures such as an embargo on the sale of nuclear-related goods to Iran, the freezing of overseas assets and a ban on overseas travel by Iranian officials directly involved in the nuclear programme. Although these measures may seem like flea-bites, the ban on the sale of nuclear-related goods could become a big issue if it applied to the nuclear reactor already being built by Iran at Bushehr with Russian assistance. The project is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Russia and no one has ever said that it has any military implications.
Discussions at the UN are likely to last for several sessions and may overlap with the annual General Assembly gathering in New York later this month at which world leaders, including President Bush, make major statements about issues in front of the UN.