With engagement over and sanctions ineffective, what is America's Iran policy, asks Graham Usher in New York Barack Obama paraded the sanctions passed by the United Nations Security Council on 9 June as the "toughest ever" against Iran's nuclear programme. He also said the international community had voted "overwhelmingly" in their favor. Both statements were triumphs of spin over substance. In fact, this was the least supported of the four sanctions resolutions adopted since the UNSC first called on Iran to halt enriching uranium in December 2006. Two of the three sets of sanctions under George W Bush's watch were passed unanimously; the third, in 2008, earned one abstention from Indonesia. For the first time this resolution received negative votes from Brazil and Turkey, as well as an abstention from Lebanon, exacted under considerable United States pressure and despite a split cabinet in Beirut. Brazil and Turkey's opposition was not tactical. Both countries openly challenged an America-led strategy against Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons which, for all its talk of engagement, still privileged coercion over diplomacy. "By adopting sanctions, the Council is actually opting for one of the two tracks (pressure and negotiations) that were supposed to run in parallel. In our opinion, the wrong one," said Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Brazil's UN ambassador. Nor were these "the toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government", as charged by Obama. They pale in comparison to the economic blockade Tehran suffered -- and survived -- during the eight-year war with Iraq. And they fall short of those sought originally by the United States, Britain, France and Germany. All had wanted "crippling" sanctions against Iran's energy sector, the lifeblood of the Islamic Republic's economy and source of billions in oil revenues. Russia and China ruled them out, partly because they would harm the Iranian people but also because such penalties would inflict damage on their investments in Iran. They also vetoed curbs on Iran's access to international banking, commercial trade and capital markets. The binding sanctions in the new resolution are an extension of an existing arms embargo, maritime checks of suspect Iranian cargoes and a ban on overseas investment by Tehran in uranium mining and enrichment. Penalties are also mandatory against one company and 14 subsidiaries "owned" by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, seen as by the US as "overseer" of the nuclear programme. The rest of the sanctions -- like financial curbs on transactions with Iranian individuals and businesses -- are voluntary. The hope expressed by Obama and the three other western states is that national sanctions by the US Treasury, Congress and European Union will supply the bite to fill out the UNSC's bark. This belies hope over experience. Many among the EU 27 nations won't back sanctions that harm Iran's energy sector or people or close the door on negotiations. And while Congressional sanctions against foreign companies that trade with Iran can hurt, it doubtful they would deter a country like China, whose hunger for energy is ravenous. "The US is not going to get anything approaching universal compliance with these 'optional' sanctions," predict Flynt and Hillary Leverett, former CIA officials and "Iran specialists" in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "The net effect will be to accelerate the reallocation of business opportunities in the Islamic Republic from the Western states to China and other non-Western powers". It was against this prospect of failure -- as well as the legacy of past sanctions that have so far only caused Iran to enrich uranium to ever higher levels and build ever larger stockpiles -- that Brazil and Turkey proffered an alternative. Last month they negotiated a deal with Tehran to send half of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for access to refined nuclear fuel for a medical reactor. It was seen as a confidence building measure that could lead to more comprehensive negotiations between Iran and western states, including the US. Obama supported the so-called Tehran Declaration only to then bury it under pressure from Congress. Instead he rushed through a fourth round of UNSC sanctions. Already angered by Washington's failure to condemn Israel for its deadly assault on the flotilla, Turkey once more saw the US sacrifice regional goals for domestic ones. With the Tehran Declaration "we have the slightest window of opportunity," said a Turkish diplomat on 9 June. "Why not give it a chance? Why kill it with sanctions? If the resolution is adopted, we'll lose Iran and lose diplomatic engagement". The Obama administration mislaid engagement a while back. It also quietly concedes sanctions are unlikely to do anything than slow Iran's sprawling nuclear programme. Instead it seems to be pursuing an Iran policy that goes beyond sanctions but is less than war or explicit regime change. According to US media reports, it consists of shoring up the missile defense systems of the US Arab allies in the Persian Gulf to "contain" Iran; a CIA "brain drain" project to encourage the defection of Iran nuclear scientists; and deepening covert actions to sabotage the nuclear programme. Where all else fails, the threat of an Israeli military threat is invoked, as it has been in US consultations with states to back sanctions. But what happens if the invoked cannon, becomes a loose one. On 8 June the New York Times reported how an Israeli delegation to China in February made the case for tougher measures to "stop Iran assembling a nuclear weapon". It quoted an unnamed Israeli official: '"The Chinese didn't seem too surprised about the classified evidence we showed them (about Iran's alleged atomic ambitions). But they really sat up in their chairs when we described what a preemptive attack would do to the region and the oil supplies they have come to rely on".
