Iran rejects September deadline on nuclear talks

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Iran today said it would not recognize a September cutoff date on the invitation to multilateral talks aimed at resolving the standoff over its disputed nuclear work, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.

The United States and other Western powers suspect that Iran's uranium enrichment program is intended to produce nuclear-weapon material, but Tehran has maintained that the effort is strictly aimed at generating nuclear power plant fuel. In May, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that his administration would review the success of its diplomatic overtures to Iran once the U.N. General Assembly convenes next month.

"We are not against negotiations but we will not allow world powers to pressure us with deadlines," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi said.

"We have several times said that nuclear weapons have no place in Iran's doctrine," he said. "We will resist and not give in to illogical demands" (Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Monsters and Critics, Aug. 10).

The United States indicated it has not expected Tehran to join new nuclear negotiations with the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

"We are under no illusions. We were under no illusions before their elections that we can get the kind of engagement we are seeking," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN.

"The president has also said, look, we need to take stock of this in September. If there is a response, it needs to be on a fast track. We're not going to keep the window open forever," Clinton said (Steven Hurst, Associated Press I/Google News, Aug. 9).

A nuclear-armed Iran would be "unacceptable," she said, according to Agence France-Presse.

"If they believe that this would give them a more secure position, a greater capacity to influence events, to intimidate their neighbors, to expand the reach of their ideology, they were mistaken," Clinton said. "We do not intend to accept nuclear weapons by Iran."

"They need to think again, because they will render their position less secure, they will trigger an arms race in the region, and they will certainly put greater pressure on the United States to extend a defense umbrella in order to hem in and contain them," she said (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Aug. 9).

Questions remain about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's contested re-election in June, but Washington has few options other than attempting engagement with the conservative leader, said U.S. national security adviser Gen. James Jones.

"We have to deal with the figures of authority that are in position," Jones told NBC's "Meet the Press."

After the September deadline, the United States would "consider appropriate next steps in light of the Iranians' response or nonresponse," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told CNN.

The Obama administration has indicated that it could push for increased sanctions should Tehran fail to respond (Hurst, AP I).

Suspicions about Iran's atomic ambitions have gained traction in Russia over the past several months, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon said Friday.

Russia has previously opposed tough U.N. Security Council sanctions against Tehran, Gordon noted, according to Interfax. Moscow should now work with Washington to further increase pressure on Iran to halt its controversial nuclear work, he said (Interfax, Aug. 7).

Russia and China have both indicated they would not support new international sanctions against Iran. Still, officials and experts said the Obama administration would probably not impose its own economic penalties on the Middle Eastern state, Reuters reported today.

"The historical experience of prior U.S. administrations makes clear that international willingness to apply rigorous sanctions is inherently limited," Suzanne Maloney, a Brookings Institution scholar, told a Senate committee last month.

Obama must make the case that his administration has made a serious effort to engage Tehran in order to drum up support for additional sanctions, according to experts. Relative inaction after the September deadline, though, might prompt Israel to launch strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, they warned.

However, doubts persist on whether sanctions would force Tehran to back off its nuclear ambitions (Ross Colvin, Reuters, Aug. 10).

Cutting off Iran's fuel imports would not impact the nation, an Iranian oil company official said yesterday. U.S. lawmakers and officials have discussed sanctions that would target refined petroleum products sent to Iran, a major crude oil producer with a limited domestic refining capability.

"Iran is by no means concerned about providing its fuel. ... Any sanctions on Iran's fuel demand would affect its suppliers not the country," National Iranian Oil Co. official Hojjatollah Ghanimifard said, according to state media.

"For the time being, there are different sources to provide gasoline for the country and it is impossible to put sanctions on Iran," he said (Xinhua News Agency, Aug. 9).

Tehran by 2007 began to diversify its gasoline suppliers and made other moves in preparation for a U.S. embargo on its imported petroleum products, Farideh Farhi, an Iran analyst at the University of Hawaii, told Time magazine (Tony Karon, Time, Aug. 10).

Halting the imports could flood world markets with excess gasoline, causing fuel prices to drop, added Mohammad Ali Khataibi, Iran's governor for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Associated Press II/BusinessWeek, Aug. 7).

"If it were possible to choke off the gasoline supply into Iran, the likelihood is that Iran's existing refinery capacity would be used first and foremost to ensure that the needs of the security forces and the regime are taken care of," Gary Sick, a former National Security Council adviser on Iran, told Time.

"Those who are going to suffer most will be the ordinary Iranians with whom we sympathize. You can argue that this might spur them to revolt, but more likely is that if their fuel rations are suddenly cut in half, ordinary Iranians will be very upset with the West," he said.

"The economic well-being of the Iranian people has never been a first-tier priority for the Iranian regime," added Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The last three decades have shown us that this regime is willing to endure tremendous hardship rather than compromise for reasons of economic or political expediency."

Instead of pursuing tough actions against Tehran, "we should continue to allow the rifts between political elites, and the rift between the people and regime, to widen on their own," Sadjadpour said. "As Napoleon once said, 'If your enemy is destroying himself, don't interfere.' The truth is, we don't know how sanctions on refined petroleum could play out, and our bottom line should be to do no harm to the prospects for political change in Iran" (Karon, Time).