Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, news briefing, May 20, 2010:
“I think first of all, it’s—as best I can tell, if the [UN] resolution [on Iran] were to be passed in anything like its current form, it’s actually somewhat stronger than I expected. But as I discussed with a lot of our allies, the importance of the resolution is twofold. First, it serves as a reminder of Iran’s international isolation, that all of the major powers are arrayed against Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions. Second, and more concretely, it—the resolution provides a new legal platform that allows individual countries and organizations such as the EU to take significantly more stringent actions on their own that go way beyond, well beyond what the UN resolution calls for in and of itself. … And I would just make a final comment. If the resolution did not have an impact in Iran, it’s not clear to me why the Iranians would have made—are making and have been making such an extraordinary effort to prevent it from being passed. If it were irrelevant as far as they were concerned, I don’t think you’d see them expending the kind of diplomatic and other kinds of energy to try and prevent its passage. …
“[I]t’s not just the UN resolution. It’s the—it’s the actions of individual countries over and above that. It is—it is a variety of pressures on Iran. You know, by itself, we’ve seen other resolutions before that have not, obviously, changed their behavior. But as we go along in this process, I think that the ratcheting up of what other countries are willing to do on their own, using the resolution as a basis, does have the potential to change behavior.”
