Iran ignores nuclear freeze demand
On Monday, Britain and France woke up and noticed that Iran's Saturday deadline to respond to the West's latest offer of incentives to give up its nuclear program had passed without any Iranian response. The 'powers' formalized the de facto extension by giving Iran until Tuesday to respond. Britain said Iran would face new UN sanctions unless it gives a response by Tuesday to the offer, a British Foreign Office spokesman said.I guess Iran is not too afraid of the West's 'firmness.' Iran did respond on Tuesday. In writing. But it ignored the real issue at hand.
"We will be disappointed if there (is) no response to the E3 proposals by tomorrow," the spokesman said, referring to proposals formally put to Tehran by Britain, France and Germany.
"We will have no choice but to ask the UN to proceed with further sanctions."
The French foreign ministry echoed that stance, saying the Islamic republic "will have to face new sanctions" if it does not respond positively by Tuesday to the international community's sanctions freeze-for-freeze offer.
In New York France's deputy UN ambassador Jean-Pierre Lacroix told AFP, "If we don't get an encouraging response from the Iranians, we will have to show firmness, resort to sanctions as in the past."
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana earlier Monday held talks with Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili.
US State Department spokesman Gonzago Gallegos said Jalili told Solana that Tehran would provide a written response on Tuesday.
Senior diplomats from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China discussed the latest developments by telephone Monday and agreed to push for new action against Iran if it continued holding out.
"We agreed that in the absence of a positive response, we have no choice but to pursue further measures," Gallegos said.
An Iranian official said that the letter did not mention the idea of freezing its nuclear work - a step the West demanded to avert more U.N. sanctions.The problem is that there's really no point to 'further sanctions,' because Russia and China won't agree to anything that's effective and the Europeans won't abide by them anyway. So long as the West isn't willing to do anything beyond sanctions, Iran is going to keep building its nukes. In fact, it seems like the only thing that could move the West to act right now might be an Israeli threat to attack.
"Iran's written response to the six countries involved in the nuclear negotiations was handed to officials at the European Union by Iran's ambassador to Brussels," Fars News Agency reported, without giving any further details.
An EU source in Brussels could not confirm the report. [Nor could I. As of this writing, this report hasn't hit the English side of FARS yet. CiJ]
On Monday, Iran warned that it could close the Straits of Hormuz, which are critical for shipping oil out of the Persian Gulf, and that it has a new torpedo capable of hitting ships 300 kilometers away.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:03 PM
1 Comments:
Iran has taken measure of the West's resolve and found it wanting. Sanctions are not going to prevent Iran from getting The Bomb. That leaves the one option - really means - of deterrence no one is willing to talk about and which now appears inevitable. A military attack to eliminate the threat.
Post a Comment
<< Home