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2 Calling time out on UN
sanctions By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Here is an interesting twist: the UN
system may actually improve a notch if the clock
on the Iran sanctions is moved back as requested
by South Africa, which currently holds the
presidency of the Security Council.
Heading the 10 non-permanent members of
the council, and bitterly complaining about being
left in the dark about the preliminary meetings
among the Permanent Five (China, France, Russia,
the United Kingdom and the United States) plus
Germany on the the draft of the third resolution
against Iran, South Africa
has
jolted the United Nations community by calling for
a 90-day time-out on further UN action, combining
this with the equally stunning blow of backing
Iran's right to enrich uranium.
Surprised
by this unexpected development on the eve of a
Security Council vote tentatively scheduled for
this week, the five permanent members and Germany
are now faced with the choice of whether to
respect South Africa's wish, widely shared among
members. Not doing so would expose the charade of
global consensus and unanimity of the
international community vis-a-vis Iran. Or they
might embrace this idea and give diplomacy,
instead of coercive sanctions, more time.
Coinciding with this has been the
misinformation put out by the New York Times
regarding a Russian ultimatum to Iran, claiming
that a Russian official, Igor Ivanov, told the
Iranians last week that unless they abide by the
Security Council's demand to suspend enrichment
activities, no nuclear fuel will be delivered to
the Bushehr nuclear power plant, nor will it be
completed.
This report, by veteran
reporter Elaine Sciolino, has been denied by
Tehran, as well as by Russia's envoy to the UN,
Vitaly Churkin, who held a press conference on
Tuesday and flatly denied the allegations,
reminding reporters that both resolutions on Iran
have carefully separated the issue of Bushehr from
the matter of uranium enrichment (see the press
conference here
).
Incredibly, in a later editorial, the New
York Times not only failed to reflect the Russian
ambassador's unequivocal denial of Sciolino's
story, it referred to her piece approvingly and
gave an extended interpretation about Russia
behaving better that bore no connection to the
Russian dismissal of the newspaper's false
allegations.
Clearly, this does not bode
well for the New York Times, which has been under
fire recently for turning the allegations of
"anonymous" US sources on Iran's troublemaking in
Iraq into front-page articles. The US media, so
adept at manufacturing consensus on foreign-policy
agendas, have been singing from the same music
sheet with the White House with respect to the
Iran nuclear issue.
Case in point, a Los
Angeles Times editorial on "smart sanctions" on
Iran calls them "humane" and then goes on to
detail their adverse impacts on the Iranian
economy. Don't tell that to the unemployed youth
in Iran whose numbers are climbing because of the
impacts of sanctions, such as making foreign
investments in Iran risk-prone and normal trade
increasingly difficult, or to the average Iranian
consumer who may have to pay higher prices for
imported goods in the near future.
Typically, the LA Times editorial
dispensed with any argument about the legal basis
of sanctions on Iran, given the absence of any
smoking guns confirming a clandestine
nuclear-weapons program. In a word, the US media
are once again failing the test of a free press in
a pluralistic society; there is nothing
pluralistic about the spate of editorials and
Iran-bashing articles filling the pages of
America's leading newspapers.
That aside,
the momentum has now shifted somewhat in favor of
Iran as a direct result of South Africa's historic
moves at the Security Council. Germany, ever
intent under Chancellor Angela Merkel to prove its
new subservient role to the US, has rushed to
argue for a speedy passage of the new resolution,
claiming to have China's backing on this, although
one must take the latter claim with a grain of
salt given similar experiences. It is more likely
to expect that China would, instead, support South
Africa's bid to postpone action on Iran, in light
of its heavy energy investments in Iran.
At this stage, a question: Why should the
US oppose such a postponement when the passage of
another UN resolution adopting new sanctions can
only sour relations with Iran just as
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