June 2008
By Sarah Abravanelli
In the past, the EU had failed to intervene in the issues concerning Iran’s uranium enrichment program and weapon proliferation, leaving the task to the United States and the UN. The EU’s involvement in the issue came just three days after Israel threatened to attack Iran if the latter did not halt uranium enrichment altogether.
Iran argues that its program is solely for peaceful purposes and that it is not attempting to develop nuclear weapons – an argument that still fails to convince most western political actors to this day.
On Monday, June 23th, the European Union imposed an asset freeze on Iran’s largest bank, Melli, and added more names to the list of Iranian citizens and officials banned from travelling to the European Union.
Concerned that Iran’s uranium enrichment program could lead the nation to use these metals towards the development and fabrication of nuclear weapons, Union members such as France and Great Britain decided to bind together with the UN and the United States in the enforcement of sanctions against Iran if the latter did not give in to international pressures.
On an official visit to Moscow, French Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner said that France, along with Britain and the Netherlands, would favor additional sanctions revolving around the business and banking sectors. Conscious that the worst case scenario at this point may very well involve war, Kouchner insisted that France would negotiate by all means before resorting to more forceful means.
Sarkozy’s similar stance on the issue appeared to many EU officials as an attempt to further align with Washington DC and support the US’s sanctions and decisions within the international political arena.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown supported Sarkozy and Bush’s move as well as the proposal they made to Iran on Saturday, which gave the Middle Eastern nation diplomatic and economic incentives in exchange for stopping its enrichment and opening talks about its nuclear work. Bush reported that the proposal was rejected by Iran.
Gordon Brown followed up by stating that if Iran went on defying UN resolutions in favor of the end of Iran’s nuclear programs, sanctions on investments in Iranian natural gas and oil industries would be implemented.
As far as opinions go, negotiations are underway and war is not even an issue yet. According to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, talks need to happen and truth needs to be uncovered between the UN, the world powers, and Iran before anyone jumps towards that last resort. Iran, he says, would turn into “a fireball” if a country was to attack.
“There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons,” he said.
Not all countries are holding back on war however. Last week, Israel threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities if it did not obey UN resolutions and stopped all nuclear programs. Indeed, Israel is serious about the matter; it has already started rehearsing, carrying out a maneuver exercise of over 100 fighter jets over the Mediterranean in early June.
So far, the Israeli exercise was only a means of conveying the seriousness of its concerns regarding Iran and its enrichment programs and Israeli officials have stated that it had more defensive ends than offensive ones.
Thus, the EU’s additional sanctions might just turn the tide and be a tie breaker between the UN and Iran. The sanctions will prod some of the countries involved to move towards some action, whether it is Iran and its compliance with European and American demands or the EU itself and the opening of talks concerning a possible armed conflict involving Israel.
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