Obama's U.N. Sanctions Push

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Igor Volsky, and Alex Seitz-Wald

After long resisting calls to join in sanctions efforts aimed at the Iranian nuclear program, "China signaled to its partners on the United Nations Security Council that it is ready to consider a council resolution" in favor of sanctions. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "affirmed late Monday the participation in Iranian sanctions talks of China, seen as the most hesitant member of the so-called 'P5-plus-1' -- the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany that are negotiating with Tehran." On Wednesday, the six major world powers -- the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany, and China -- agreed "to begin putting together proposed new sanctions on Iran over its suspect nuclear program after China dropped its opposition." U.S. and other Western diplomats are "also pressing hard on two non-veto-wielding Council members, Turkey and Brazil, both of which have publicly questioned the usefulness of sanctions, to at least abstain on any final vote." President Obama predicted on Tuesday that he would be able to persuade the United Nations to "move forcefully" against Iran with new sanctions within weeks, not months. "The fact that Beijing has agreed to discuss these steps is bad news for Tehran," writes Iran analyst Meir Javedanfar. "This is why Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dispatched the top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, to hold talks with the Chinese government." State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States wants to focus on financial holdings of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, as part of a resolution that puts an appropriate bite on the Tehran government but spares the Iranian people undue hardship. The Iranian government remains defiant that sanctions will not halt its nuclear program.

'AN INTELLIGENCE COUP': Earlier this week, ABC News reported that an Iranian nuclear scientist "who disappeared last year under mysterious circumstances, had defected to the CIA and been resettled in the United States." Intelligence officials called the defection of scientist Shahram Amiri "an intelligence coup" in the continuing CIA operation to spy on and undermine Iran's nuclear program. In a recent report (pdf) to Congress, the CIA concluded that "Iran continues to develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so," but also restated its previous conclusion that "we do not know whether Tehran eventually will decide to produce nuclear weapons." While the upcoming National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran is expected to revise some of the key conclusions of the 2007 NIE -- which held that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen -- the news that the United States has had custody since last June of a key Iranian nuclear scientist raises questions about how drastic those revisions might be. ABC reports that Amiri "has been extensively debriefed since his defection by the CIA, according to the people briefed on the situation. They say Amiri helped to confirm U.S. intelligence assessments about the Iranian nuclear program." Obama told CBS that "all the evidence indicates" that Tehran is trying to get the "capacity to develop nuclear weapons."

CONSERVATIVES COMPLAINING: For eight years, the Bush administration failed to effectively confront Iran's nuclear ambitions, yet many former Bush officials and supporters are now criticizing the Obama administration for the same thing. Former (recess-appointed) U.N. ambassador John Bolton, a long-time advocate of bombing Iran, said Thursday that Obama is "naive" in thinking more sanctions against Iran will stop its nuclear program. "This additional round of sanctions will have no material impact," Bolton said. Likewise declaring the new sanctions to be "failing" even before they've been adopted, Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute described the options as: "Either Iran gets a nuclear weapon and we manage the risk, or someone acts to eliminate the threat" through military force. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol declared Obama's engagement policy a failure and accused the administration of preparing to accept an Iranian nuclear weapon. However, another Weekly Standard writer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, has credited Obama's approach with putting pressure on the Iranian regime, writing that "Obama could rightly claim that his outreach policy toward the Islamic Republic helped create the tumult that we've seen" since Iran's June 12 elections. Similarly, journalist David Ignatius, a long-time Iran watcher, wrote that "White House officials argue that their strategy of engagement has been a form of pressure, and the evidence supports them."

FORGING EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS: During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-senator Obama clearly stated that a secondary benefit of his Iran engagement policy was the creation of greater international unity and focus on the Iranian nuclear problem. "If it [negotiation with Iran] doesn't work," Obama said during the first presidential debate, "then we [will] have strengthened our ability to form alliances to impose tough sanctions" on Iran. That strategy seems to be working. Russia had been a skeptic of sanctions, but has now indicated a willingness to consider them. In late March, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iran was allowing an opportunity for mutually beneficial dialogue with the West to "slip away." "The [Iranian] regime has become more isolated since I came into office," Obama said in an interview with CBS News. "Part of the reason that we reached out to them was to say, 'You've got a path. You can take a path that allows you to rejoin the international community, or you can take a path of developing nuclear weapons capacity that further isolates you.'" Center for American Progress analysts Sam Charap and Brian Katulis wrote that Obama's "emphasis on collaboration and shared responsibilities constructed a new foundation for global security co-operation, which will extend beyond reining in Iran's nuclear program. In little over a year, the engagement policy has revived America's influence and leverage and created a diplomatic infrastructure that will make America more secure." As Rudy DeLeon, Winny Chen, and John Gans wrote in a 2008 report (pdf) for the Center for American Progress, "diplomacy, when integrated with other policy tools," provides "a powerful force multiplier for advancing U.S. interests."