Washington – The Barack Obama administration is preparing a new batch of sanctions against Iran to be announced next week in advance of nuclear talks in Turkey.
Two Iran experts in Washington who are usually well briefed about U.S. Iran policy said more Iranian officials would be designated as abusers of human rights on top of eight sanctioned earlier this year. That would deny them the right to travel to the U.S. and freeze any assets they might hold in this country.
Gary Samore, White House coordinator on non-proliferation, told a neoconservative organisation, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, last week that the U.S. would “maintain and even increase pressure” against Iran so long as negotiations produced no progress on curbing Iran’s nuclear programme.
Asked by IPS if that meant new punishments before a meeting expected in January in Istanbul, Samore said, “I think it would be an important message to send to take additional measures.”
U.S. officials have described two days of talks with Iran in Geneva last week – the first in more than a year – as underwhelming. Samore said there had been “no visible progress”.
Another U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Iranian delegation, led by national security adviser Saeed Jalili, spent most of the time in “political posturing”. Unlike last year’s session, there was no one-on- one meeting between Jalili and the top U.S. representative, undersecretary of State Bill Burns.
However, U.S. officials remain hopeful that at the least, sanctions will slow Iran’s nuclear progress, and at best, change Iran’s cost-benefit analysis regarding a programme with potential military applications.
“I believe that if the cost … is high enough, they will accept suspension” of their uranium enrichment programme, Samore said last week.
Iranian officials have given no indication of such flexibility. In fact, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said repeatedly that he will not suspend enrichment of uranium, which has given Iran a stockpile of more than 3,000 kilogrammes of lightly processed nuclear fuel.
U.S. officials this week were trying to understand what impact if any the forced exit of Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki would have on negotiations.
Mottaki is to be replaced by Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation. Educated in the United States at M.I.T., Salehi is certainly well versed in nuclear matters. But the abrupt manner of his appointment – while Mottaki was on a diplomatic mission in Africa – has further alienated Iranian conservatives who are increasingly worried by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s consolidation of power and who blocked a tentative nuclear deal last year.
Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council and a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, called the substitution of Salehi for Mottaki “a mixed bag”. If Iran is serious about a resolution of the nuclear dispute, Salehi could be an asset, Parsi said, but he might be weaker on other issues.
There was a flurry of negative reaction to the move even in Iran’s highly restricted press. This is despite the fact that Mottaki has been more spokesman than player in Iranian foreign affairs throughout his five-year tenure and especially since disputed 2009 presidential elections.
At a conference in Bahrain earlier this month, he literally ran away from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. At the same time, he described as positive Clinton’s remarks that Iran might be allowed to enrich uranium at some point in the future – if it satisfied international concerns.
The Obama administration has focused on the nuclear issue with Iran, but has also sought to show concern for human rights in the wake of a brutal government crackdown on protestors following last year’s elections.
In September, the White House designated eight Iranian officials, including the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, the intelligence minister and the former chief prosecutor, for “serious human rights abuses against the people of Iran”.
At the time, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the “list of names is not exhaustive and will continue to grow based on events in Iran, and as additional information and evidence becomes available”.
Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois newly elected to fill Obama’s old seat in the Senate, has suggested that the Obama administration go further and “make human rights a central tenet of future negotiations with Iran”.
Keynoting the Foundation for Defense of Democracies conference last week, Kirk – who helped author a major sanctions bill when he was in the House – said that President Obama should invite exiled members of the opposition Green Movement to meet him at the White House, increase funding for Iranian democracy promotion and make Iranian political prisoners “household names throughout America” much as Ronald Reagan did with Soviet detainees in the 1980s.
Visit IPS news for fresh perspectives on development and globalization.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy