Debate Looms Over Effectiveness of Iran Sanctions

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Tuesday, September 21, 2010.

US Hails Iran Sanctions, But Experts Doubt Results – Robert Burns of The Associated Press [link]

• In a speech Monday, the Treasury Department's point man on Iran sanctions, Stuart Levey, said U.S. and international sanctions are "dramatically isolating Iran financially and commercially." And he asserted that this "can and will create leverage for our diplomacy" with Iran's leaders.
• The sanctions have limited Iran's ability to attract foreign investment, pinched its ability to import gasoline, created a drag on its shipping business and hurt Iranian banking relationships worldwide.
• Analysts generally agree sanctions are taking a toll on Iran. But will they stop Iran from getting the bomb? Probably not, says Ray Takeyh, a Mideast expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former State Department adviser on Iran policy.
• "Washington and its allies still fail to realize that they are not dealing with a conventional nation-state making subtle estimates of national interests," Takeyh said.
• Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has come to a similar conclusion. "I think eventually we will have to deal with the reality that sanctions may not change the views of the Iranians on these issues" of a nuclear program, Powell said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

New START Treaty Advances – The Times Record [link]

• The New START nuclear arms control treaty has advanced to the full Senate, where it needs a two-thirds majority to be ratified.
• Given the overwhelming bipartisan support that earlier nuclear arms control agreements had received in the Senate, Thursday’s committee vote should be the precursor of New START’s final ratification by a similar margin later this year.
• We urge Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to quickly join their GOP colleagues. Given their past support of nuclear arms control treaties, they should understand why this treaty is such an essential step in reducing the threat nuclear weapons pose to our world.

U.S. Nuclear Stockpile Still Dwarfs China's – Gregory Kulacki in The Washington Times [link]

• The idea that China could build hundreds of warheads every year runs counter to U.S. estimates, which indicate that China does not have enough fissile material for such increases and is not producing more.
• One step the United States could take to ensure that China does not increase warhead numbers rapidly would be to accelerate negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, which the United States and China support.
• Recent Pentagon reports suggest China may increase the number of warheads deployed on missiles that can reach the United States from 50 to 100 by 2020. Under New START, the United States will have more than 15 times as many. Fears of impending nuclear parity between the United States and China are unfounded.
• Note: Gregory Kulacki is a Senior Analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Ploughshares grantee.

Meeting Unlikely to Break Disarmament Impasse, Diplomats Say – Global Security Newswire [link]

• A meeting set for Friday of Cabinet-level delegates from U.N. member nations has little chance breaking a stalemate at the international Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland, diplomats told Reuters yesterday.
• The 65-nation conference in 2009 broke a deadlock, agreeing to a work plan that addressed four issues: nuclear disarmament, a fissile material cutoff pact, the prohibition of space-based weapons, and an agreement by nuclear-armed states not to use their strategic weapons against nations that do not possess such armaments.
• Pakistan has no intention of letting conference deliberations move forward , said Pakistan's Amb. Zamir Akram, [who] referred to Islamabad's concerns about India's larger supply of fissile material and "discriminatory" nuclear trade pacts negotiated by New Delhi and Washington.
• "We must not discount the possibility that, without a concerted dose of political will, this institution will atrophy into irrelevance," Laura Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to the conference, said ahead of the planned meeting at the United Nations in New York.
• As the possibility of agreement Friday on beginning fissile material cutoff talks has diminished, some officials have called for groups of nations to begin negotiations outside the conference, Reuters reported.

AP Interview: Gul Backs Mideast Nuclear-Free Zone – Anita Snow in The Washington Post [link]

• Turkish President Abdullah Gul said he will call for a Middle East totally free of nuclear weapons when he addresses the U.N. General Assembly later this week.
• Last week, the Obama administration warned Arab nations that they risk contributing to a failure of the Mideast talks if they continue to pressure Israel over its nuclear program.
• Gul said Turkish officials do not assume that Iran has a fully peaceful nuclear program, but "of course we cannot accuse Iran" of pursuing nuclear weapons without evidence.
• Turkey, a member of the NATO alliance, has been governed by an Islamic-rooted party since 2002 that has tried to improve relations with Iran.

View from the Dark Side

The Burden Is on the Full Senate to Provide Due Diligence Regarding New START – Baker Spring of The Heritage Foundation [link]

• At least to some degree, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has come to recognize that the treaty contains important flaws. These flaws include an insufficient commitment to defending the U.S. and its allies against strategic attack, limits on U.S. missile defense options, the application of treaty limits to conventional U.S. weapons, and weak policy for insisting on Russian compliance, just to name a few.
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has effectively left it to the Senate as a whole to serve as the quality-control mechanism envisioned by the Founding Fathers.
• The Senate should make it clear that it will not be rushed into debating New START. At a minimum, this means not taking up the treaty until after the Obama Administration has provided Senators and appropriate staff with access to the negotiating record and they have been given the time to review that record in detail.