The Pressure Continues

The US today has increased pressure on Iran by stating that the IAEA needs to report Iran to the UN Security Council because of it non-compliance with the NNPT.

Bush's envoy Jackie Sanders told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors that Iran was "willing and apparently able to cynically manipulate the nuclear non-proliferation regime in the pursuit of nuclear weapons."

The U.N. nuclear watchdog had a "statutory obligation" to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, she said, according to a text of her speech.

This is contrary to the EU-3 idea of continuing to offer carrots to Iran in the hope that they will agree to drop their nuclear program. Raul Marc Herecht argues that Iran has the potential to cause another huge rift between the US and Europe, and that the actions of the EU-3 have contributed to that possibility.

But the EU3, in all probability, has done the opposite of what it intended. It has actually made it more likely that the Bush administration will take a tougher, more unilateral approach to the Islamic republic than if it had not tried to assert a European role in halting clerical Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capacity. The Europeans have forced the Bush administration to focus more acutely and sooner on the Iran conundrum than it would have if it were merely the International Atomic Energy Agency issuing its usual reports alluding to Iran's past duplicity and promises of confessional behavior in the future. Consumed with Iraq, the Bush administration would have had more difficulty unilaterally developing a diplomatic movement against the mullahs. The administration has certainly been complicit in European actions toward Iran--U.S.-European discussions have been close, which is why the EU3 has so shaped the administration's thinking. Many in the Bush administration wanted to pass the Iran problem to the Europeans, hoping that EU-Iran negotiations would allow Washington to continue ignoring the conundrum. Some still hope the Europeans can be converted to a big-stick approach; others, uncomfortable with the grand rhetoric about transforming the Middle East, hope the president will adopt the EU3's Libyan scenario.