The US, Britain and France turned up the pressure on Tehran on Thursday ahead of next week’s release of a keenly awaited UN report that may offer new details about the military side of Iran’s nuclear program.
Washington and its European allies suspect that Iran is developing the capability to produce atomic weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear energy program. Iran denies wanting atom bombs and insists its program is for generating electricity.
The report by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to unveil detailed intelligence pointing to military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program, while stopping short of saying explicitly that Tehran is trying to build such weapons.
“One [issue] in particular that I want to mention is the continuing threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program,” US President Barack Obama told reporters ahead of a G20 heads of state summit in the French resort of Cannes.
“The IAEA is scheduled to release a report on Iran’s nuclear program next week and [French] President [Nicolas] Sarkozy and I agree on the need to maintain the unprecedented pressure on Iran to meet its obligations,” Obama said.
The US, EU and their allies around the world have imposed economic sanctions on Tehran for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment program, which Western powers believe is at the heart of an Iranian atom bomb program.
The US and Israel have repeatedly hinted at the possible use of force against Iranian nuclear sites, eliciting threats of fierce retaliation from the Islamic Republic.
The UN Security Council, with the backing of Iran’s traditional sympathizers Russia and China, has imposed four rounds of increasingly tough sanctions on Tehran since 2006.
Responding to a newspaper report that Britain was stepping up military contingency plans amid mounting concerns about Iran, a spokesman for the British Foreign Office said on Wednesday that London was keeping all options open — including the possibility of military action.
“We want a negotiated solution, but all options should be kept on the table,” a Foreign Office spokesperson said.
The report in the Guardian, without citing a source, said Britain’s Ministry of Defense believed the US might accelerate plans for missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities and cited British officials as saying it would seek and receive military help from Britain for any mission.
UN diplomats in New York and government officials elsewhere called the Guardian report exaggerated. They said Israel would be more likely to use military force against Iranian nuclear facilities than the US, which is bogged down in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The pressure on Iran comes weeks after the US accused Iran of plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, an allegation Tehran denied.
US Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland reiterated that the Obama administration was not closing the door on any options in dealing with Tehran’s nuclear program.
“We have said many times in the last weeks and months that we do not seek a military confrontation with Iran,” she said.
“That said, we are going to use every means at our disposal to continue to try to increase the international pressure on Iran to meet its IAEA obligations and to come clean on its nuclear program,” Nuland told reporters in Washington.
Diplomats in New York reiterated the West’s commitment to a two-track strategy of negotiations aimed at resolving Iran’s nearly decade-long nuclear standoff with the West and the threat of further sanctions should it refuse to cooperate.
Years of fitful negotiations with Tehran have gone nowhere. Depending on what the new IAEA report on Iran reveals, Western diplomats say they might have no choice but to try to expand the UN sanctions regime against Tehran.
There has been a surge of speculation in Israeli media this week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working to secure Cabinet consensus for an attack on Iranian nuclear installations.
Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and launched a similar sortie against Syria in 2007, precedents lending weight to its veiled threats to take similar action on Iran if foreign pressure fails to curb its nuclear program.
However, many independent analysts see such a mission as too much for Israel to take on alone against Iran.
One senior Western diplomat said that international sanctions combined with sabotage operations like the Stuxnet computer virus that temporarily hobbled Iran’s enrichment program have slowed Tehran’s nuclear progress, reducing the need for the use of military force any time soon.
“Our policy of slowing things down has been successful, but it hasn’t stopped it in its tracks,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Analysts say a raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities would wreak such damage on global prosperity and security that other means — a mix of sanctions and sabotage — must remain the levers of pressure on Tehran.
There are fears Iran could retaliate to an attack by temporarily severing the marine and pipeline arteries supplying a large part of global oil and gas demand.
Malcolm Chalmers, research director at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, described the impact of attacking Iran in stark terms: “You are talking about creating a wounded bear with very unpredictable consequences.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS