US Features
U.S. coy about U.N.'s 'variety of tools' against Iran
By Mike McCarthy
Jan 13, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - The United States and European Union calls for the U.N. Security Council to confront Iran over its nuclear ambitions could bring a fresh round of contentious diplomacy within the United Nation's most powerful body.

The U.S. declaration came after Britain, France and Germany, who had been leading E.U. negotiations with Iran, said Thursday that talks had reached an impasse and asked the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency to call a special meeting to refer Iran to the Security Council.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to resolve the dispute with Iran diplomatically. She expressed hope that shifting the issue to the Security Council would show Teheran its underestimation of international resolve to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

No timeline has been set for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) governing board to vote on the E.U. request, but the United States believes there are already enough votes to bring the issue to the Security Council. It appears that even Russia and China have backed off earlier resistance to the U.N. referral.

'There is a generally shared view that the time has come for Security Council referral,' a senior State Department official said. 'I don't see anybody opposing U.N. referral.'

Taking the issue to the Security Council would set the stage for tough negotiations about how to address what Rice called Iran's 'dangerous defiance' of the international community.

The United States can likely expect strong support from Britain, France and Germany for sending a tough message to Iran, but Russia and China, which have financial stakes with Iran, might be reluctant to come down too hard on the Islamic state.

The E.U. decision to involve the Security Council came after Iran, which says its nuclear programme is solely to meet civilian energy needs, broke IAEA inspection seals on its nuclear facilities this week to resume research on uranium enrichment - a process that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

The United States has been careful to avoid specifying what actions it will seek when the Security Council takes up the issue, especially whether international sanctions should be placed on Iran.

'There are a variety of options, a variety of tools at the disposal of the international community once it has been referred to the Security Council,' Rice said.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has not ruled out the possibility of sanctions.

The decision to haul Iran before the Security Council came after more than two years of unsuccessful negotiations with Iran by Britain, France and Germany, known as the E.U.-3, to get Iran to permanent halt suspicious nuclear activities.

The United States, eager to demonstrate a multilateral approach to the Iran dispute after a fallout with Berlin and Paris over the Iraq invasion, supported the negotiations by backing Iranian membership in the World Trade Organziation. President George W. Bush also expressed support for Moscow's proposal to enrich uranium on Russian soil and send it to Iran for use in generating nuclear energy.

Bush, as is customary for American presidents, has not ruled out using military force to bring Iran into compliance, but Rice cautioned against any conclusion that taking the issue to the Security Council would resembled the run-up to the 2003 war in Iraq.

The United States justified the war based on Security Council resolutions during the 1990s demanding Iraq demonstrate that it had given up programmes toward weapons of mass destruction, or face 'serious consequences'.

'It's always a mistake to reason by analogy,' Rice said. 'The situations are - of course - very different.'

Instead, Rice said, the effort to get a Security Council referral should be seen as a 'new phase in diplomacy'. She said that Washington hopes Security Council involvement will force Iran's hand back into negotiations.

'I would hope, that now seeing the very powerful reaction of the international community, that Iran would take a step back and look at the isolation that it is about to experience,' Rice said.