Condoleezza Rice is convinced that the Security Council’s action to impose sanctions on North Korea will make it easier to get similar sanctions against Iran:
MOSCOW — The swift decision to impose international sanctions on North Korea for its rogue nuclear test could grease the skids for sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.
“It really does help to create a momentum,” Rice said after leaving four days of crisis talks in Asia in response to the North’s test.
That a nice thought, isn’t it? Tough sanctions on North Korea will equal tough sanctions on Iran. Too bad Russia’s Foreign Minister doesn’t agree with her:
Russia will not allow the U.N. Security Council to be used to punish Iran over its nuclear program, the foreign minister said.
“We won’t be able to support and will oppose any attempts to use the Security Council to punish Iran or use Iran’s program in order to promote the ideas of regime change there,” Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Kuwaiti News Agency KUNA which was posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Web site Saturday.
Russia was ready to discuss ways to pressure Iran into accepting a broader international oversight of its nuclear program, but “any measures of influence should encourage creating conditions for talks,” Lavrov said Friday.
On Saturday, Lavrov had lunch with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who visited Moscow in a bid to persuade Russia to approve U.N. sanctions on Iran.
I’m sure it’s just a teeny, tiny misunderstanding. And pigs have wings.
(Cont.)
The truth is, Ms. Rice is well aware that sanctions are not going to be imposed on Iran, or at least not anything like the sanctions placed on North Korea. Both Russia and China have big investments in Iran, and neither one of them is interested in the Neocon fantasy of regime change through the application of sanctions and/or military force. Nor does the Iranian regime’s nuclear program rise to the same threat level of North Korea’s. North Korea has enough bomb grade plutonium to make several weapons, and a breeder reactor to make more. Iran has no plutonium, no reactor capable of making plutonium, and a small scale uranium enrichment program which has been, to date, unable to produce anything more than small quantities of very low enriched uranium suitable only for nuclear power generation, not weapons manufacture. Everyone knows this.
Everyone also knows that Bush, Cheney and the Neocons desire regime change in Iran, and the installation of a new government more friendly to US interests, particularly the interests of America’s multinational oil companies. They all know that the primary reason Iran is a concern of the American government is all that oil. And they are well aware that the Bush administration spurned the more moderate Iranian regime of President Khatami when diplomatic feelers were extended in 2003 seeking to strike a deal with the United States regarding Iran’s support for Hezbollah, proposed assistance with respect to Al Qaida, and a resolution of its nuclear program.
So, to pretend that the prospects of UN imposed sanctions against Iran are made more likely by progress in the case of North Korea, is disingenuous, at best. At worst it is the product of the Bush administration’s continued delusion that it can create the reality it wants simply by wishing it so.
