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Iran Likely to Face Security Council Next Week

Posted on: Wednesday, 8 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Barbara Slavin

Barring a last-minute breakthrough, Iran is going before the United Nations Security Council next week to face escalating pressure over its nuclear activities.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday that any uranium enrichment in Iran was unacceptable, dismissing a flurry of Iranian proposals.

The United States has said Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. "For our part, the United States is keeping all options on the table. ... We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," Vice President Cheney said Tuesday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appeared at a news conference with Rice on Tuesday, closing ranks with the United States on the issue. Russia had offered to enrich uranium fuel for Iran, a proposal backed by the United States, but Iran has not agreed to it.

Iran offered not to enrich uranium on an industrial scale if it can continue research. The United States has rejected the offer. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, such as generating electricity.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog organization, is meeting in Vienna this week to discuss the issue. The U.N. Security Council is the next step.

Options for pressuring Iran are limited, experts say.

Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, predicts "a policy of incremental pressure" to try to get Iran to stop uranium enrichment.

The likeliest first step would be a statement by the Security Council urging Iran to stop the program, he said. If Iran does not comply, the United Nations could order it to do so. Iranian officials might then be barred from traveling and their assets frozen.

Further measures could include:

*Sanctions. Russia and China, which have veto power on the Security Council and economic interests in Iran, are likely to oppose serious sanctions, said Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Iran provides 5% of the world's oil, and any move to block that trade could boost prices from the current level of about $60 a barrel to more than $100, Cordesman says. Rice has said the administration would not attempt such sanctions initially.

Mohsen Rezaie, former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and an Iranian government official, said Iran could cause problems for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan if sanctions were imposed. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that Iran is putting forces into Iraq.

*Regime change. The Bush administration plans to spend $85 million this year to promote political change in Iran. "We want to see a democratic Iran," says Nicholas Burns, the top U.S. diplomat dealing with Iran. "We want to see an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism."

Most of the money -- $50 million -- would go to U.S. television broadcasting. The rest is intended to help Iranians organize labor unions and independent political groups and bring more Iranian students to the USA.

*Direct talks with Iran. Interviews with two senior Iranian officials have raised the possibility of direct talks with the United States. "There is no limitation on our side" to negotiations, national security adviser Ali Larijani told USA TODAY last month. Rezaie said, "This is the best time for Americans to build trust and say they are not against peaceful nuclear technology in Iran." The Bush administration rejects the offers as diversionary tactics, said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman.

*Military action. President Bush says he wants a diplomatic solution, but he refuses to rule out military strikes. Iran's program would be difficult to destroy. "It would be not one site but numerous sites," some of them underground, says Gary Schmitt, a defense and intelligence scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Contributing Steven Komarow in Washington; wire reports.

(c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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