Iran Sanctions Draw Cool Reaction

The new UN Security Council resolution tightening sanctions against Iran was greeted by the media in many countries either with outright dismissal or guarded optimism.

In the Middle East region and other Muslim countries, some media accused the UN of being biased towards Israel, but one UNSC member state expressed optimism, saying there was still room for dialogue on the issue.

Iran

The Iranian media gave a low-key reaction to the UNSC resolution on Iran’s nuclear activity. Reporting was based mainly on elaborating on Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki’s speech at the UNSC session on 24 March. The official news agency, IRNA, published the full text of his remarks on 25 but Iranian radio and TV did not elaborate on the content of the resolution or its probable implications for Tehran.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the resolution was against the UN charter, echoing Mottaki’s position while later on, Iranian TV broadcast Iranian cabinet spokesman Gholamhoseyn Elham announcing that Tehran would “partially suspend” cooperation with the IAEA.

Iranian newspapers are not currently appearing because of the New Year holiday with the next issues due on 3 April.

Pan Arab coverage

By contrast, the pan-Arab TV station, Al-Jazeera, led several of its news bulletins with the story, leading on Mottaki’s declaration that Iran’s position remained the same. “The Iranian foreign minister said that pressure and intimidation would not change his country’s policy.”

The station also quoted the head of the Majlis foreign affairs committee condemning the sanctions as “unacceptable” but the station also added that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he would try to conduct new contacts with Iranian chief negotiator Ali Larijani.

In a later bulletin, a correspondent in Tehran said opinion among Iranians was “somewhat divided” while another report said the head of the National Council of Iranian Resistance, Mariam Rajavi, had welcomed the UN resolution, describing them as “a necessary response to a regime that has exposed the security of the region and the world to danger by violating international standards to acquire a nuclear bomb”.

Another pan-Arab station, Al-Arabiya, carried mainly factual reports but added that the resolution “left the door open for negotiations with Iran to find a solution to the present crisis”, adding that Russia and China had long opposed sanctions before agreeing to this resolution. The Iranian government’s decision to reduce its cooperation with the IAEA was broadcast as breaking news.

Iraq

Several Iraqi TV stations, the government-sponsored Al-Iraqiyah, the independent Al-Sharqiyah and Baghdad TV, which is believed to be sponsored by the Iraqi Islamic Party, ran factual reports of the story.

However, Al-Furat TV, which is affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), noted that Iran was “quick to reject” the new UN resolution.

“It seems that the tug of war between the UN Security Council and the Islamic Republic [of Iran] will escalate,” the report went on.

It also quoted Aladdin Broujerdi, head of the National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee at the Iranian Shura Council, as saying that the resolution was “unacceptable and unworkable”.

Syria

The official government TV station, Space Channel TV, initially reported on the resolution as the last item in its news bulletin, saying that Mottaki stressed that UNSC “pressure and intimidation” would not change Iran’s position. Reporting further on the issue, the station attacked the UN for what it saw as its pro-Israel position. “In view of what is taking place at the US-controlled UN Security Council, it has become clear that the issue is one of political targeting par excellence. Besides, it is a practical embodiment of the ugliest forms of bias towards Israel.”

The TV also recalled that, in order to protect Israel, the US rejected a Syrian initiative presented to the UNSC in 2003 that called for making the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. It concluded by noting that the resolution reflected an attempt “to impose the logic of force and intimidation instead of adopting the language of dialogue,” adding that Israel posed a threat to international peace and security because it possessed “one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world.”

The TV also reported on Iran’s rejection of the resolution, with reaction from an ordinary Iranian in a Tehran street. It also quoted comments by EU policy chief Javier Solana, who called for a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, and the Luxembourg prime minister who called for dialogue to solve problems, “thus disagreeing with Washington, London and Paris, who talk about isolation and threats.”

Israel

Reporting in the Israeli media was straightforward and relatively low-key.

Voice of Israel radio did not give the story prominence in its agenda nor were any prominent Israeli government officials interviewed. The Israeli press did not feature any commentaries or editorials on the matter either, although The Jerusalem Post noted that following the vote, Israel would focus on denying Iran “the fruit of its labours.”

Among the internet news sites, Ynetnews noted that “diplomatic sources” expressed “satisfaction” with the vote, calling it an “appropriate response to the Iranian refusal to honour past resolutions.”

Turkey

Several Turkish TV stations reported the story in a neutral fashion, although its place on the news agenda varied from channel to channel.

Commercial NTV gave prominence to the story but, by contrast, the state-funded TRT 2 news channel pushed it to the bottom of the list, without comment and accompanied by the US and EU reactions.

Both the commercial, pro-Islamic Istanbul Kanal 7 TV and Kurdish Roj TV gave straightforward accounts while the website of commercial CNNTurk highlighted Mottaki’s remarks in reaction to the UN vote. There was also more straight reporting, without comment or slant, from the semi-official Anatolia news agency.

As for the secular press, the centrist, mass appeal Milliyet was the only paper that reported on the UN vote, which it did without editorializing.

However, a commentary in the left-wing daily Cumhuriyet criticized the West’s approach to Iran, advising Turkey to help efforts aimed at ensuring that Iran’s nuclear programme was indeed limited to peaceful purposes while refraining from supporting the embargo.

“One cannot help discerning an intention to use accusations against Iran on the grounds that it is posing a nuclear threat as a pretext just like allegations about weapons of mass destruction which was used as a pretext for attacking Saddam’s Iraq,” it said.

Elsewhere, in the Islamist press the fundamentalist daily, Vakit, accused the UN of double standards for turning a blind eye to the nuclear programmes of the US, West and Israel.

For its part, Milli Gazete said the UNSC had passed its latest resolution against Iran under pressure from “Western states controlled by imperialist United States and Zionist Israel.”

Russia

Most Russian TV coverage was factual, with little comment or editorializing.

A correspondent on Gazprom-owned NTV said there was no mention of force in the resolution and that the UNSC’s main aim was still to continue dialogue with Iran.

The Iran story appeared low down the running order of the weekly current affairs programme Vesti Nedeli on official Russian TV channel Rossiya.

Referring to Iran’s reaction to the new UNSC resolution, presenter Andrey Kondrashov said: “This (the resolution) is not even a hint, but a direct message – Tehran did not take heed.”

The two other main channels, Channel One and NTV did not cover Iran in their weekly current affairs programmes.

In the press, Russia’s business daily Vedomosti quoted the head of Centre for Modern Iranian Studies as saying that the latest resolution was “yet another public humiliation” of Iran which had also delivered “a devastating blow” to Russian-Iranian ties.

The anti-Kremlin business daily Kommersant said nobody believed that Iran would accept the two-month ultimatum to stop its nuclear programme, adding that in fact more countries in the world were now beginning to get ready for military action in Iran.

“By creating the phenomenon of [President] Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, President Bush proved the irrationality of his actions. President Ahmadinezhad … is no less irrational in his own actions. It is precisely these two irrationalities that will not allow a rational solution to be found, making the operation in Iran inevitable,” it said.

However, the pro-Kremlin Izvestiya noted that Russian envoy to the UN Vitaliy Churkin deemed the resolution positive as it ruled out the use of force against Iran.

China

However, in China, the broadcast media put the story high on its agenda in news programmes on CCTV-4 and CCTV-1. A Xinhua correspondent in Tehran told the “News 60 Minutes” on CCTV-4 that the resolution had “left some room for possible future compromise between Iran and the international community” and an announcer-read report said the US had welcomed the resolution for conveying a “hardline signal to the Iranian leaders”.

Other news programmes on the same channel and also on CCTV-1 broadcast many announcer-read reports of developments and reaction from Mottaki and Solana.

There was extensive factual reporting on the UN resolution against Iran on the inside pages of most national newspapers and the international news sections of news portals.

Commentaries in the China Daily and Renmin Ribao newspapers stressed that a diplomatic solution was still possible. Renmin Ribao reporters noted that the Iranian nuclear issue was “still far from an irreversible stage. There is still a lot of room to manoeuvre in Security Council Resolution 1747″.

The China Daily held a similar opinion, saying that the ball was now in Iran’s court. “The door is clearly open for Iran to negotiate with the international community. Once again, the next move is Iran’s. It should not let the opportunity for cooperation slip,” a commentary said. It also indirectly warned the United States, stating that “members of the international community should refrain from any unilateral efforts that could worsen the crisis”.

Some newspapers republished Xinhua News Agency reports questioning the motives of the United States. “Some people worry that the United States is forcefully pushing the Security Council to pass one resolution after another against Iran to deliberately ‘exhaust’ its diplomatic measures in the eyes of the world, so as to foreshadow military action when the time is ripe in future.”

Pakistan

In the Pakistani press, Nawa-i-Waqt said the new sanctions appeared while the US was “preparing for aggression against Iran” and appealed to Muslim countries to unite and ban trade with the US and its allies.

Similarly, Khabrain said the new sanctions on Iran appeared to be aimed at promoting “internal destabilization” in Iran and isolating it and calls on the Organization of Muslim Conference (OIC) to work out a strategy to prevent crisis in Muslim countries and promote unity among them.

Jang points the finger at Israel, saying that it was that country’s nuclear status that made Iran carry out its own nuclear programme, adding that the acquisition of nuclear technology was a right that no country should be deprived of.

Sources: BBC Monitoring research in English 26 March 07

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Newsfile. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.