Anticipating the third UN resolution against tehran
Fox News, January 31, 2008
It turns out that the hasty
jubilance of Tehran following the release of the key
judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate was just
wishful thinking.
Last week, in what the ayatollahs' foreign minister called a
“surprise” move, the United States and five other world
powers dealing with Iran's nuclear issue agreed on a new UN
Security Council sanctions resolution. The new resolution,
if adopted, will severely tighten the existing UN sanctions
and add new punitive measures targeting Tehran's financial
and military institutions.
The swift move by the ambassadors of Germany and the five
permanent members of the Security Council — the United
States, United Kingdom, China, Russia and France — in New
York to fine tune the draft resolution and its subsequent
distribution to the rest of the Council members make the
passage of the resolution very likely.
Much has been said about the compromises made and the
purported weakened language of the draft resolution since
the Berlin meeting. The fact remains, however, that in light
of an eight-month deadlock and predictions about the
impossibility of accord among the six powers in the
aftermath of the NIE; arriving at such a resolution was a
huge achievement.
The political tremors of this “surprise” development were
fully felt at the heart of the clerical regime in Tehran.
Factional infighting, now in full swing before the upcoming
parliamentary elections farce, took a new turn following the
Berlin agreement. While these squabbles will not engender
the emergence of a genuine “moderate” faction, given the
intrinsic imperviousness of this regime to real reform, they
will undoubtedly weaken the entirety of the ayatollahs'
rule.
The regime's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, whose
role in setting Tehran's foreign policy has been reduced to
damage control, dedicated his remarks at the Davos Economic
Summit to this topic. Meanwhile, Hashemi Samareh, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's chief adviser, rushed to the summit to deliver
the regime's official nuclear policy, which, according to
the Wall Street Journal, destroyed “a remaining glimmer of
hope for compromise.”
The new draft resolution would have a huge psychological
impact on Tehran's financial transactions and institutions,
already restricted as a result of the UNSC's two previous
sanctions, which were both vigorously augmented by the
punitive sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury. Bank Melli
and Bank Saderat, two of Iran's biggest banks, are
reportedly the targets of the UNSC's third resolution. Bank
Sepah was already sanctioned by the UNSC.
Earlier this month, industry sources told Reuters that
Indian refiner Reliance stopped selling fuel to Iran last
year after French banks BNP Paribas and Calyon ceased
offering credit on the deals. "None of the banks which have
something to do with the United States were willing to open
… because of U.S. pressure," a senior Reliance Industries
Ltd source told the news agency.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Bank Saderat's
managing director admitted that as a result of unilateral
sanctions by Washington, 200 foreign banks have halted their
transactions with Bank Saderat. Recent figures from Bankers'
Almanac reveal that the number of Saderat's correspondent
banks has declined from 29 in August 2006 to eight, two of
which are Saderat subsidiaries, according to the Times.
Banking sources in the Persian Gulf have confirmed that
banks in the United Arab Emirates, a major strategic hub for
Tehran's financial lifeline, have also stopped issuing
letters of credit to Iranian companies. Moreover, Bahrain's
biggest lender, Ahli United Bank, has reportedly suspended
business with Iran. Meanwhile, France's Total announced last
week that it was dealing with "huge cost issues" on the Pars
liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Iran. The UN
sanctions do not target Iran's energy sector directly, but
they create a ripple effect that indirectly hinders those
foreign companies working in that sector. The Pars LNG
terminal was scheduled to begin operations next year, but
this has already been postponed to at least 2011.
More than 18 months after the first binding UN sanctions
resolution dealing with Tehran's defiant continuance of
uranium enrichment was adopted, the ayatollahs' regime
stands in clear violation of UNSC resolutions 1737 and 1747.
The enrichment aspect of Tehran's nuclear program has always
been at the heart of the international concerted effort to
remove the possibility of Tehran possessing a nuclear
weapon.
Tehran's secret nuclear program was dealt a severe blow when
it was fully exposed by the major opposition coalition, the
National Council of Resistance of Iran, in August 2002.
Those and subsequent revelations set in motion an
international campaign to pressure Iran to come clean. This
forced Tehran to halt its exposed and soon-to-be inspected
Lavizan-Shian facility in mid-2003 and disperse the nuclear
weaponization program to several other secret sites the
following year. As a result of the NCRIs' continued
revelations and subsequent spotlight on Tehran's nuclear
program, the world had a great opportunity to rigorously nip
the program in the bud. It chose instead to engage Tehran in
endless and ineffectual negotiations before the Security
Council finally took charge of the issue.
Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani,
recently told a state-run media outlet that Tehran used the
diplomatic talks to buy time and political cover to complete
many of its exposed but unfinished facilities: “We accepted
the temporary and voluntary enrichment so that with the
temporary suspension of just one segment and mollifying the
international environment we could complete the rest of our
nuclear infrastructure,” he told the Aftab daily in
December.
The UN sanctions and complementary U.S. sanctions have
proven politically and financially effective. They need,
however, to be implemented more vigorously and
systematically. Sanctions must be coupled with a concerted
policy of empowering the democratic opposition seeking to
bring about a government free of tyranny, terror and weapons
of mass destruction.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
