What’s important about the unified UN stand is that it will force Iran back to the bargaining table if it wants to avoid growing diplomatic isolation from the world’s superpowers. Yes, Tehran can claim that it has support from two of the world’s rising nations, Turkey and Brazil, which it will tout as allies against the great satans of the Security Council. But realistically, the Iranians know that having lost Russia and China on sanctions, they are on shaky ground.
The Obama administration has been calculating that unity among the “P-5” (diplo-speak for the five permanent Security Council members) is more important than the details of the sanctions resolution, and [last] week’s events showed that this strategy was right. The draft resolution was the payoff for President Obama’s eight discussions about Iran with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev over the past year, and for the administration’s nascent partnership with the world’s true rising power, China.
What’s next in this diplomatic game of chicken? The answer, says a senior administration official, is that Iran must address two key issues that were part of the enrichment deal floated in October in Geneva. …The problem with this protracted process of bargaining is that the clock is ticking, with Iran moving toward nuclear-weapons capability even as it haggles on the diplomatic front. … The chances of avoiding this bad outcome are fractionally better today than they were a week ago, for one reason: When it came to the crunch this time, Russia and China refused to be enablers for Tehran. By endorsing UN sanctions, they stood with the nations that want to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. Access the full article>>
