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U.S.: Agreement on draft resolution for new Iran sanctions
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"Iran is rational, but the U.S. is throwing a tantrum," he said.
Under the proposal, Iran would send low-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for supplies of higher-grade uranium from Russia and France to power the medical research reactor in Tehran. Iran tentatively agreed last year to a deal under which it would send the bulk of its low-enriched uranium to Russia, but Tehran soon backed away from that accord and insisted that any swap take place on its soil. It apparently dropped that demand as part of the new arrangement brokered by Turkey and Brazil, but the proposal would cover a smaller amount of Iran's low-enriched uranium than the original one.
The new proposal does not, however, require Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment or enter into substantive negotiations on its program.
The original swap proposal, tentatively agreed at a meeting in Vienna in October, would have removed 2,640 pounds -- nearly 80 percent -- of Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium. But because Iran has continued to enrich uranium since the plan was first raised, a deal based on the same terms now would remove only about 50 percent of the country's stockpile.
In the meantime, Iran has started enriching uranium to an even higher level -- from 3.5 percent to 19.75 percent -- and Iranian officials said they will keep doing so, even though the need for that enrichment has now been negated by the swap deal announced Monday.
In response to Iran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment and the discovery last year of a secret new uranium-enrichment facility near Qom, U.S. officials have proposed stiffening existing sanctions, focusing especially on Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite force that increasingly is a powerful entity in Iran's economy. The proposals would allow for search and seizure of suspicious cargo and a ban on trade credits.
But officials already appear to have backed off plans for the resolution to name specific Iranian cargo carriers and forbid the issuance of trade insurance for Iranian carriers.
The draft resolution reaffirms the Security Council's demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment and fully cooperate with the IAEA, and it expands an asset freeze and travel ban against individuals and entities linked to the Revolutionary Guards, according to a senior U.S. official. The United States and other majors powers have yet to identify those who would be targeted by these measures, which would be spelled out in an annex to the resolution.
The resolution would also expand an arms embargo to include battle tanks, combat aircraft, missiles and five other categories of weapons. But it would fall short of the comprehensive arms embargo sought by the United States and France, allowing Iran to continue to buy light weapons.
The resolution would also establish a new "framework" for carrying out inspections of suspected cargo on the high seas or in ports. States would inspect suspected vessels if there were "reasonable grounds" that they were engaged in transporting banned goods. States that discovered banned cargo would be required to seize and dispose of it and would have to report any evidence of Iranian sanctions violations to the Security Council. Financial institutions with "reasonable grounds" to believe that Iranian banks or other firms were evading sanctions would be called upon to block any financial transactions, including the issuance of insurance or reinsurance, related to banned proliferation activities. The measure would obligate states to require their nationals to "exercise vigilance" in their business dealings with Iranian firms, particularly if the companies were suspected of evading sanctions or engaging in banned activities.
The draft urges Iran to reengage in nuclear talks with the United States and other key powers and promises to lift sanctions once Tehran complies with the Security Council's demands.
But the United States failed to win approval for several key proposals it had sought. The draft resolution contains no restrictions on Iran's lucrative oil trade and makes no mention of a U.S.-backed proposal to halt new investment in the Iranian energy sector.
