Vienna – The next stop for Iran appears to be the U.N. Security Council now that Moscow and Washington have smoothed over their differences – but new conflicts seem inevitable when the council’s focus turns toward Tehran’s nuclear defiance.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board has to discuss Iran before the issue is taken up by the Security Council, but it had not even broached the issue by Tuesday.
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov assured reporters in Washington that their countries continued to see eye to eye on Iran, the IAEA meeting in Vienna was still focused on other agenda items.
But the U.S., with the apparent agreement of France and Britain, already was shifting the action to the council chamber in New York, setting the stage for the next moves against the Islamic republic.
A senior Western diplomat familiar with the Security Council negotiations said those two permanent council members would begin preparing a statement later in the day “urging” Iran to reimpose a freeze on all enrichment, which can be misused to make nuclear arms.
The diplomat, who demanded anonymity, said the statement also would call on Iran to cooperate with IAEA inspectors trying to establish whether it had ever tried to make such weapons – all requests made earlier by the board.
That’s the easy part.
But even the next step – attempts to agree on a council resolution making the same points, but now demanding, not requesting them – could expose the deep differences over Iran.
