In recent days, the debate over Iran’s nuclear program has experienced a series of unexpected and dramatic turns.
On Monday, a joint statement by Iran, Turkey and Brazil said that Iran will deliver 1,200 kg of low enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for higher fuel enrichment, a reactor for medical research aimed at .
The statement was the first concrete step towards implementing a proposal by Mohamed ElBaradei, former director of the IAEA, about a year before, and supported by the UN Security Council just six months ago.
But what seemed an important step mediated by two emerging powers, after a long period of unsuccessful negotiations under American guidance, has quickly given way to disappointment.
Just one day after the statement, Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, announced that the United States would submit a resolution to the UN Security Council for a fourth round of sanctions against Iran, saying that the draft resolution is supported by China and Russia, who had previously opposed the requests for new sanctions.
The resolution, if approved, could impose a stronger arms embargo and extend restrictions against Iranian banking sector, as well as the prohibition of certain Iranian assets abroad, such as mining of uranium.
The apparent willingness of Clinton to impose further sanctions speaks for itself. Moreover, it has emerged in response to a gesture of goodwill by Iran, now in the midst of the ongoing UN nuclear meeting throughout the month of May, which aims to save the creaking Treaty Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
And ‘this kind of’ leadership ‘that transforms international victory in a defeat of non-proliferation agenda.
It also confirmed the fears of many about the intentions of the United States: the administration of President Barack Obama is equally one-sided as that of George W. Bush, his predecessor, and shows the same contempt for multilateral negotiations, although it has adopted new rhetoric.
For the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, just peace does not seem to be an option to consider. And with a ‘leadership’ of this kind, the UN Security Council sinks further into irrelevance or perhaps even to self-destruction.
The timing seems appropriate. Iran recalls May 22 as the anniversary of its ’siege’ by U.S. economic.
After breaking the American embassy in Tehran in 1979, Jimmy Carter, the then President of the United States imposed sanctions against Iran, freezing Iranian assets abroad worth some 12 billion dollars.
But coming at a time of internal upheaval in Iran, and just before the Iran-Iraq war, the sanctions were initially little more than a nuisance for a country that had to deal with issues much more serious.
In most cases, U.S. products could be purchased through third parties with relatively low additional costs. And Iranian exports – which tended to be raw materials like oil or high quality products such as carpets, caviar and pistachios – not dependent on one market.
In 1995, the then U.S. President Bill Clinton extended the scope of sanctions including a significant oil, gas and trade, and keeping an effective business in the United States from the Iranian market.
That same year, the U.S. Congress introduced punitive measures against foreign companies investing more than $ 20 million a year in Iran’s energy sector.
Although these sanctions were eased somewhat in 2000, in 2007 Washington imposed sanctions on several major Iranian banks, and concentrated his attention sull’establishment Iranian military. This decision was accompanied by greater reliance on multilateral sanctions through the United Nations, to strike Iran’s nuclear technology.