United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

On Monday the U.N. Security Council passed 14-0, with Indonesia abstaining, a third resolution imposing sanctions on Iran in response to its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. -- Resolution 1803 "will impose travel restrictions on Iranians suspected of involvement in a nuclear weapons program and demands greater vigilance by U.N. states over the activities of Iranian banks, including Bank Melli and Bank Saderat. Member states are also encouraged to avoid granting export credit guarantees that could be used to finance the nuclear program and to search ships and planes suspected of carrying banned cargoes," the Financial Times reported.[1] -- "The sanctions were agreed in January by the permanent members of the council, including Russia and China," Harvey Morris and James Blitz noted. "But four non-permanent members — South Africa, Indonesia, Libya, and Vietnam — subsequently questioned the need for further measures after previous restrictions failed to persuade Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment." -- The Christian Science Monitor called it a "14-to-1 vote," and noted that it "marked the first of the resolutions on Iran that did not achieve unanimity. But the vote was still a better outcome for the Council's big powers than the numerous abstentions or even negative votes they were anticipating even a week ago."[2] -- Howard LaFranchi said that "the longer-than-anticipated debate over the merits of a third resolution, and the way in which the resolution was watered down to achieve passage, suggest the degree to which developing countries fear that the U.N. process could lead to military strikes against Iran. Developing countries are not dismissive of Iran's argument that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes of energy generation — but that the world's economic powers want to maintain control of nuclear energy technology." -- Bronwen Maddox, diplomatic correspondent for the Times of London, called the Security Council vote a "diplomatic coup," and expressed the view that while "[t]he substance of the sanctions is slender," it "still represents a real advance on the previous two rounds. However, the most valuable aspect may be the timing, with Iran’s parliamentary elections less than two weeks away. It will be hard for President Ahmadinejad, at a time of rising food and fuel costs for the Iranian economy, to portray as helpful the new damage to its ties with the outside world."[3] -- Maddox said that last week's IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program "contained the usual mixture of areas where the IAEA felt Iran had obstructed its inquiries and those where it felt satisfied," but was "distinctly more blunt in sounding the alarm," thus going "some way to mitigate the damaging effect of the U.S.’s National Intelligence Estimate late last year, whose conclusion that Iran had abandoned the active design of nuclear warheads has been used by Tehran to imply that it is innocent of all charges." -- AFP reported that the U.S. welcomed the resolution as a signficant step forward.[4] -- Ominously, however, Haaretz reported that "Jerusalem is disappointed with the latest round of sanctions. . . . Israel sees them as soft, especially with regard to the list of individuals and institutions on which the sanctions would be imposed."[5] ...

U.N. AGREES NEW SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN
By Harvey Morris (United Nations) and James Blitz (London)

The United Nations Security Council imposed a third package of sanctions against Iran on Monday, targeting individuals most closely involved with its alleged nuclear weapons program and turning up the heat on banks suspected of financing it.

In a separate statement, the five permanent members of the council and Germany nevertheless said they were committed to pushing for an early negotiated settlement of the stand-off with Tehran.

The sanctions were agreed in January by the permanent members of the council, including Russia and China. But four non-permanent members -- South Africa, Indonesia, Libya, and Vietnam -- subsequently questioned the need for further measures after previous restrictions failed to persuade Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment.

In a 14-0 vote in the council, Indonesia held out, abstaining on the basis that Iran was cooperating with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog and that more sanctions were not the best course.

A statement agreed by foreign ministers of the U.N.’s big five powers and Germany said proposals for a negotiated settlement would offer Iran and the region “substantial opportunities for political, security, and economic benefits.”

The six were prepared further to develop proposals first put to Iran two years ago, the statement said.

The new measures contained in U.N. resolution 1803 will impose travel restrictions on Iranians suspected of involvement in a nuclear weapons program and demands greater vigilance by U.N. states over the activities of Iranian banks, including Bank Melli and Bank Saderat. Member states are also encouraged to avoid granting export credit guarantees that could be used to finance the nuclear program and to search ships and planes suspected of carrying banned cargoes.

Mohammad Khazaee, Iranian envoy to the U.N., lambasted the council for what he described as an “unjust and irrational decision on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.” Referring to previous international pledges of co-operation with a civilian Iranian program, he said: “There has never been, nor will there ever be, guarantees that our needs for fuel will be completely provided by foreign sources.”

Western diplomats acknowledged that the package was weaker than they wanted but had been watered down to gain maximum support in the council.

High-level pressure exerted to try to win unanimity included a direct appeal by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to Thabo Mbeki, his South African counterpart, on a visit to South Africa last week.

The European sponsors revised their original text to highlight the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency and to welcome its agreement with Iran on resolving all outstanding questions about its nuclear intentions. The Western position was last week strengthened by evidence presented by the IAEA indicated Iran continued nuclear weapons research as late as 2004.

A U.S. intelligence estimate last year that Iran had suspended such activity in 2003 took some of the urgency out of the debate over the nuclear program. The IAEA, however, presented diplomats with intelligence indicating that the weaponization studies had continued until January 2004.

According to diplomats who attended the IAEA briefing, the agency said it had a wide range of documentation -- including video evidence -- that pointed to attempts by Iran to militarize its nuclear program.

Among the IAEA evidence were documents showing Iran was looking to design a “spherical warhead” suitable for the Shahab-3 missile that would explode at a height of 600 meters. The IAEA official who gave last week’s briefing in Vienna excluded the possibility that an explosion at that altitude could be related to chemical or biological weapons.

The IAEA also said at the briefing that it had been forbidden to interview Mohsen Fakrizadeh, the official who ran the weaponization studies for Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics.

U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL PASSES MORE SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN
By Howard LaFranchi

** With Indonesia abstaining. the 14-to-1 vote is the first such resolution on Iran that did not achieve unanimity. **

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. -- The United Nations Security Council on Monday passed a third set of sanctions targeting Iran for its pursuit of uranium enrichment, a process the international community fears could lead to development of a nuclear weapon.

In response, Iran promised to press forward with its nuclear program, including uranium enrichment, saying it "cannot and will not accept a requirement which is legally defective and politically coercive." The unbowed commitment to perfecting the enrichment process practically guarantees that Iran's nuclear program will remain at the top of the international security agenda.

The Council's 14-to-1 vote, with rotating Council member Indonesia abstaining, marked the first of the resolutions on Iran that did not achieve unanimity. But the vote was still a better outcome for the Council's big powers than the numerous abstentions or even negative votes they were anticipating even a week ago.

The resolution includes new financial measures against specific Iranian individuals and institutions, provisions for inspecting certain Iranian vessels and aircraft, and restrictions on the sale of some dual-use materials to Iran. It is considered an "incremental" increase in pressure on Tehran to halt its enrichment program, according to U.S. officials, and is not expected to force a quick change of heart by Iran.

In a statement following the vote on behalf of the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States, China, and Russia, Britain's ambassador to the U.N., Sir John Sawers, said the resolution reflects the "ongoing serious concerns about the proliferation risks of the Iranian nuclear program." The statement also reiterated the six powers' offer to provide Iran with incentives in exchange for halting its nuclear enrichment program.

But in a long speech to the Council as it prepared to vote, Mohammad Khazaee, Iranian ambassador to the U.N., insisted that Iran would never bow to "unlawful action against a proud and resolute nation."

That statement only confirmed the view held by many Western officials that Iran has not altered its activities as a result of international diplomatic action. "We have the impression nothing has really changed on the goals being pursued [in Iran]" since the first set of sanctions was approved in December 2006, says a senior European diplomat who requested anonymity to comment on a delicate international issue.

That is not the view of Indonesia, however, whose ambassador to the U.N., R.M. Marty Natalegawa, said it abstained to express how the resolution did not reflect the "mixed picture" of Iran's cooperation with international agencies. The resolution risks rendering Iran even less cooperative with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he said.

Still, the vote comes amid indications that the U.N. sanctions, along with separate measures taken by the U.S., are being felt by Iranian elites. Even Ambassador Khazaee acknowledged an impact in comments to the U.N. press last week.

"The sanctions are biting somewhat," adds the senior European official, "and they are biting in ways we want them to."

U.S. and European officials, especially, want the sanctions to hit the financial and business interests of Iran's political, military, and financial leadership, without having an adverse impact on the living standards of ordinary Iranians. From the Western officials' standpoint, one desired effect of the new sanctions is that they have a public-relations impact. The officials say they hope renewed attention to the international community's disagreement with Tehran will encourage Iranian voters in mid-March local elections to send a message by supporting the country's moderates.

But Monday's Council vote comes amid contradictory directions in the nearly two-year effort to forestall any effort by Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

On the one hand, fresh evidence publicly unveiled last week by the IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, adds new weight to mounting evidence that Iran at least in the past actively pursued a nuclear weaponization program. That evidence, revealed in a meeting of the IAEA in Vienna last week, appears to have played a role in securing the 14 votes against Iran.

On the other hand, the longer-than-anticipated debate over the merits of a third resolution, and the way in which the resolution was watered down to achieve passage, suggest the degree to which developing countries fear that the U.N. process could lead to military strikes against Iran. Developing countries are not dismissive of Iran's argument that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes of energy generation -- but that the world's economic powers want to maintain control of nuclear energy technology.

"South Africa does not want to see [either] a nuclear Iran or a country denied peaceful technology," said Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa's ambassador to the U.N., in a postvote statement that reflected some countries' disagreement with the tactics of the resolution's sponsors and with the campaign for a third resolution now. Ambassador Kumalo said South Africa, which once threatened to vote "no" or abstain, voted "yes" based on Iran's failure to comply with earlier resolutions.

Yet reflecting the view of other rotating Council members, including Vietnam and Indonesia, Kumalo said South Africa would have preferred to put off the vote and leave further deliberations on the Iranian nuclear program to the IAEA.

Another notable report on Iran was publicly released late last year: The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran halted a nuclear-weapons program in 2003 but has still worked on uranium-enrichment technology, which could be used for weapons development.

In its statement to the Council, Iran played to concerns of developing countries that the world's developed powers seek to prolong their control of top lucrative technologies. "No country . . . can solely rely on others to provide it with the technology and materials that are becoming so vital for its development and for the welfare of its people," Khazaee said. "Peoples across the globe have lost their trust in the Security Council" and see it as the work of "a few powers to advance their own agenda," he added.

Monday's resolution could be the last time the Security Council takes up Iran in a while, but it does not necessarily mean the effort to increase sanctions will fall dormant. For one thing, passage of the resolution is expected to pave the way to passage of sanctions by the European Union.

European officials say that new measures have been prepared but that several countries preferred to proceed only after a renewed expression of disagreement with Iran by the international community. And the basis of that dispute remains the same, Britain's Ambassador Sawers said: "Iran continues to pursue a program that makes no sense for a civilian nuclear-power program."

It is a diplomatic coup for those opposed to Iran’s nuclear ambitions to have managed to get such broad support for a third round of United Nations sanctions. The vote, of 14 members in favor, with only Indonesia abstaining, represented a triumph of bargaining over the past 72 hours and a clear rebuff to Iranian nuclear ambitions. Libya and South Africa accepted special wording making clear that Iran was being treated no differently from other signatories of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty.

The substance of the sanctions is slender but still represents a real advance on the previous two rounds. However, the most valuable aspect may be the timing, with Iran’s parliamentary elections less than two weeks away. It will be hard for President Ahmadinejad, at a time of rising food and fuel costs for the Iranian economy, to portray as helpful the new damage to its ties with the outside world.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: “The world is not turning its back on Iran” and that the offer of “economic and scientific cooperation is still on the table” but that “the risk of an arms race in the Middle East is too great for us not to address.”

The most encouraging part of the negotiations to get the new Security Council resolution is the solidity of the “Euro-Three” -- Britain, France, and Germany -- and the council’s other three permanent members, the U.S., Russia, and China. Fears that Russia and China would veto the resolution fell away as they agreed to put their concerns about Iran’s ambitions above their desire for commercial and strategic links with Tehran. Miliband said: “The way in which [the six] held together has defeated the predictions of those who said the international community would blink.”

The second encouragement must be the clear warnings of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Mohamed ElBaradei emphasized his grave concerns at the possibility that Iran intends to give itself the capability to make nuclear weapons despite its denials.

The report by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog last week contained the usual mixture of areas where the IAEA felt Iran had obstructed its inquiries and those where it felt satisfied. In the past, Iran has used the even-handedness of these reports to claim endorsement of its behavior. But the IAEA’s tone, this week and last, has been distinctly more blunt in sounding the alarm.

This goes some way to mitigate the damaging effect of the U.S.’s National Intelligence Estimate late last year, whose conclusion that Iran had abandoned the active design of nuclear warheads has been used by Tehran to imply that it is innocent of all charges.

As the IAEA has now emphasized, that is far from true; the actual design of a warhead is the easiest of the technical steps in acquiring that capability. Uranium enrichment is the real obstacle.

The new sanctions include a ban on dealings with two Iranian banks, travel restrictions on named Iranians, and some detailed curbs on its exports. Judging by its reaction to past sanctions, and by the attention it has paid to these talks, Iran will talk tough but will find it hard entirely to shrug off the practical consequences of the bans or the wider warning that even supposed allies dislike its nuclear work. Iran’s highly controlled elections will not be a good test of what Iranians think of their leaders, let alone this single issue. But all the same, it will be hard for Ahmadinejad to portray more isolation as a help to Iranians at a difficult time.

WASHINGTON -- The United States welcomed Monday a U.N. vote to tighten sanctions on Iran, hoping it will make Tehran stop sensitive nuclear work and enter negotiations with Washington and other powers.

The United States is "pleased to see the Security Council has recognized the continuing threat posed by Iran's nuclear program through this vote on additional sanctions," the State Department's deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council voted overwhelmingly to tighten U.N. sanctions on Iran in its latest bid to pressure Tehran into suspending uranium enrichment.

The United States hopes the vote "will encourage Iran to change its behavior and to do what is required of it, including suspending its uranium enrichment activities and entering into negotiations with the P5-plus-1," Casey told AFP.

The P5-plus-1 refers to negotiations involving the United States, France, Britain, Russia, and China -- which make up the five permanent member of the U.N. Security Council -- plus Germany.

The negotiations have aimed at punishing Iran with sanctions for spurning U.N. calls to stop enriching uranium or at offering Tehran incentives in echange for halting its controversial nuclear work.

The West fears the know-how gained from uranium enrichment could give Iran the capability to build nuclear weapons.

But the Islamic republic, which adamantly refuses to halt enrichment work, insists its nuclear program is peaceful and geared only toward production of electricity.

Gordon Johndroe, the National Security Council spokesman, hoped Iran would understand the U.N. message.

"The international community has spoken with one voice again today," Johndroe said.

"Iran has a choice to make: it can reap the benefits of cooperation with the rest of the world or it can continue to isolate itself and suffer the consequences of the additional sanctions imposed by the United Nations," he said.

Resolution 1803, sponsored by Britain, France, and Germany, was backed by 14 of the council's 15 members. Indonesia abstained during the vote which was presided by Russia, the council chair for March.

Libya, South Africa, and Vietnam joined Indonesia in expressing reservations about this third set of sanctions against the Islamic Republic but decided to vote in favor in the end.

Jerusalem is disappointed with the latest round of sanctions against Iran passed late last night by the United Nations Security Council, a government source said yesterday. Israel sees them as soft, especially with regard to the list of individuals and institutions on which the sanctions would be imposed.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said yesterday that the Security Council's resolution was another essential step expressing the understanding that the international community must not give up and stand idly by in light of Iran's nuclear efforts.

"Any additional decision by any country, member, or group, adds more weight to create the mass of sanctions needed to stop Iran," Livni said.

The resolution, passed yesterday, authorizes cargo inspections to and from Iran for prohibited materials, additional monitoring of Iranian financial institutions and the freezing of assets of those involved in its nuclear program.

"If the majority supported it, it only shows it doesn't have enough meat," the source said.

The Foreign Ministry's official response stated that the resolution was passed in recognition of the fact that the international community justifiably has no faith in Iran's declarations that its nuclear program is peaceful.