the Obama Administration and its hapless diplomatic strategy

Clinton says deal reached on new Iran sanctions

Source: The Associated Press (AP)/Los Angeles Times

May 18, 2010

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Michael Reynolds / EPA / May 18, 2010)

WASHINGTON Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday the United States has agreed with China, Russia and other major powers on a proposal for “strong” new sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program.

Clinton told a Senate committee that the five permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S. — along with Germany would send a new draft sanctions resolution to the entire council later Tuesday, capping months of painstaking negotiations.

Clinton said she spent Tuesday morning on the phone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “finalizing the resolution,” which will be introduced in the United Nations later in the day. Details were not immediately released, but the sanctions are expected to broaden economic penalties on Iranian officials and institutions.

Russia in China have previously resisted calls for a new round of sanctions, but in recent months have been persuaded they were needed.

The announcement came just a day after Iran, Brazil and Turkey said they had agreed on a confidence-building plan for Iran to swap nuclear materials that many believed would blunt the U.S.-led drive for a fourth round of U.N penalties on Iran.

Clinton said the agreement on a new resolution by the major powers was a rejection of Iran’s efforts to forestall penalties.

“This announcement is as convincing an answer to the efforts undertaken by Tehran over the last few days as any we could provide,” Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

U.S. and European officials had reacted skeptically to the Brazilian-Turkish-brokered proposal, warning it still allows Iran to keep enriching uranium toward the pursuit of a nuclear weapon. The deal was concluded during a visit to Tehran by Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who has fought against a new round of sanctions.

Clinton repeated the U.S. skepticism about the agreement, saying “there are a number of unanswered questions regarding the announcement coming from Tehran.”

“While we acknowledge the sincere efforts of both Turkey and Brazil to find a solution regarding Iran’s standoff with the international community over its nuclear program, we are proceeding to rally the international community on behalf of a strong sanctions resolution that will in our view send an unmistakable message about what is expected from Iran,” Clinton said.

She did not disclose details of the draft, which will be presented to the entire 15-member U.N. Security Council at 4 p.m. Tuesday, U.N. diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement.

Iran’s Nuclear Coup

Source: The Wall Street Journal

May 18, 2010

What a fiasco. That’s the first word that comes to mind watching Mahmoud Ahmadinejad raise his arms yesterday with the leaders of Turkey and Brazil to celebrate a new atomic pact that instantly made irrelevant 16 months of President Obama’s “diplomacy.” The deal is a political coup for Tehran and possibly delivers the coup de grace to the West’s half-hearted efforts to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

Full credit for this debacle goes to the Obama Administration and its hapless diplomatic strategy. Last October, nine months into its engagement with Tehran, the White House concocted a plan to transfer some of Iran’s uranium stock abroad for enrichment. If the West couldn’t stop Iran’s program, the thinking was that maybe this scheme would delay it. The Iranians played coy, then refused to accept the offer.

But Mr. Obama doesn’t take no for an answer from rogue regimes, and so he kept the offer on the table. As the U.S. finally seemed ready to go to the U.N. Security Council for more sanctions, the Iranians chose yesterday to accept the deal on their own limited terms while enlisting the Brazilians and Turks as enablers and political shields. “Diplomacy emerged victorious today,” declared Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, turning Mr. Obama’s own most important foreign-policy principle against him.

The double embarrassment is that the U.S. had encouraged Lula’s diplomacy as a step toward winning his support for U.N. sanctions. Brazil is currently one of the nonpermanent, rotating members of the Security Council, and the U.S. has wanted a unanimous U.N. vote. Instead, Lula used the opening to triangulate his own diplomatic solution. In her first game of high-stakes diplomatic poker, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leaving the table dressed only in a barrel.

So instead of the U.S. and Europe backing Iran into a corner this spring, Mr. Ahmadinejad has backed Mr. Obama into one. America’s discomfort is obvious. In its statement yesterday, the White House strained to “acknowledge the efforts” by Turkey and Brazil while noting “Iran’s repeated failure to live up to its own commitments.” The White House also sought to point out differences between yesterday’s pact and the original October agreements on uranium transfers.

Good luck drawing those distinctions with the Chinese or Russians, who will now be less likely to agree even to weak sanctions. Having played so prominent a role in last October’s talks with Iran, the U.S. can’t easily disassociate itself from something broadly in line with that framework.

Under the terms unveiled yesterday, Iran said it would send 1,200 kilograms (2,646 lbs.) of low-enriched uranium to Turkey within a month, and no more than a year later get back 120 kilograms enriched from somewhere else abroad. This makes even less sense than the flawed October deal. In the intervening seven months, Iran has kicked its enrichment activities into higher gear. Its estimated total stock has gone to 2,300 kilograms from 1,500 kilograms last autumn, and its stated enrichment goal has gone to 20% from 3.5%.

If the West accepts this deal, Iran would be allowed to keep enriching uranium in contravention of previous U.N. resolutions. Removing 1,200 kilograms will leave Iran with still enough low-enriched stock to make a bomb, and once uranium is enriched up to 20% it is technically easier to get to bomb-capable enrichment levels.

Only last week, diplomats at the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran has increased the number of centrifuges it is using to enrich uranium. According to Western intelligence estimates, Iran continues to acquire key nuclear components, such as trigger mechanisms for bombs. Tehran says it wants to build additional uranium enrichment plants. The CIA recently reported that Iran tripled its stockpile of uranium last year and moved “toward self-sufficiency in the production of nuclear missiles.” Yesterday’s deal will have no impact on these illicit activities.

The deal will, however, make it nearly impossible to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program short of military action. The U.N. is certainly a dead end. After 16 months of his extended hand and after downplaying support for Iran’s democratic opposition, Mr. Obama now faces an Iran much closer to a bomb and less diplomatically isolated than when President Bush left office.

Israel will have to seriously consider its military options. Such a confrontation is far more likely thanks to the diplomatic double-cross of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazil’s Lula, and especially to a U.S. President whose diplomacy has succeeded mainly in persuading the world’s rogues that he lacks the determination to stop their destructive ambitions.