Iran Sanctions Vote Could Happen Wednesday

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

Stories we're following today, Tuesday, June 8, 2010: 

U.S. Presses Its Case Against Iran Ahead of Sanctions Vote - The New York Times [link]

• With a vote on new sanctions against Iran only days away, the Obama administration is making the case to members of the United Nations Security Council that Iran has revived elements of its program to design nuclear weapons.
• European and American officials expect the vote could come as early as Wednesday, and they say they believe the sanctions will pass 12 to 3, with Turkey, Brazil and Lebanon likely to vote against the sanctions.
• In advance of the vote, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran maintained a defiant posture on Tuesday, saying Tehran would not be pressured by the threat of sanctions. “If the U.S. and its allies think they could hold the stick of sanctions and then sit and negotiate with us, they are seriously mistaken,” he told a news conference in Turkey, according to the state-run Press TV satellite broadcaster.
• According to a senior administration official, the revised case to the Security Council members “made the point that the Iranians are doing both dual-use research and some things that you can explain only by an interest in nuclear weapons.”

Iran Sanctions Text Obtained, Vote Likely Wednesday - ABC News [link]

• ABC News has obtained the final draft of the latest Iran sanctions text that two US officials say is expected to be put to a vote in the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
• The text, obtained from a UN diplomat, differs very little from the version initially presented to the full council on May 18 by the so-called P5+1, the five permanent members of the council plus Germany that have been negotiating with Iran.
• Today council diplomats are putting the final touches on the document’s annexes, which will list the Iranian individuals and entities placed under sanctions. Those lists will ultimately determine how much teeth the new sanctions will have.
• “In all, it is impressive that the draft survived so close to its original form and that it has continued to move ahead speedily with the support of China and Russia. Ambassador Rice deserves a raise,” said Jacqueline Shire, a nuclear expert at the Institute for Science and International Security, [a Ploughshares Fund grantee.]
  
  

Think Again: Ronald Reagan - Foreign Policy [link]

• These days, virtually every time someone on the American right bashes President Barack Obama for kowtowing to dictators or failing to shout that we're at war, they light a votive candle to Ronald Reagan.
• Today's conservatives have conjured a mythic Reagan who never compromised with America's enemies and never shrank from a fight. But the real Reagan did both those things, often. In fact, they were a big part of his success.
• Reagan had long harbored a genuine terror of nuclear war reflected in his decades-old belief -- often ignored by backers on the right -- that nuclear weapons should eventually be abolished.
• [In 1986] in Reykjavik, Iceland, Reagan and Gorbachev came within a whisker of agreeing to destroy all their nuclear weapons.
• Like Reagan, Obama took office in an environment that severely constrains the ability of the United States to launch new military campaigns. For many contemporary conservatives, being a Reagan disciple means acting as if there are no limits to American strength. But the real lessons of Reaganism are about how to wield national power and bolster national pride when your hands are partially tied.

Isolating Iran Cannot Be Done Unilaterally - Max Bergmann in The Wonk Room [link]

• In essence, we have already sanctioned ourselves out of relevance, as decades of US sanctions have eliminated Iran’s reliance on the US market. So to further isolate Iran, it is about getting other countries to do more.
• Getting them on board now sends a strong signal that the world – not just the west – is strongly opposed to the actions of the Iranian regime.
• While the right say UN sanctions have been watered down, they overlook the fact that UN sanctions pave the way for stronger European sanctions against Iran.
• More than 20 percent of Iran’s trade is with the EU, by contrast just 0.5 percent is with the United States.
• To get crippling sanctions on Iran, as Secretary Clinton suggested, requires further extensive multilateral coordination, as no unilateral American sanctions will ever be “crippling.”

Medvedev Coming to See Obama - The Cable in Foreign Policy [link]

• Sources close to the U.S. and Russian governments confirmed to The Cable Monday that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will visit Washington and meet with President Obama on June 24.
• The Medvedev visit would be an opportunity to show unity on that front, or if the process lags, to give it one final push across the finish line.
• Putting Iran sanctions in the rear-view mirror will also allow the administration to concentrate on the main accomplishment of Obama's "reset" of U.S. relations with Russia: ratification of the new START nuclear reductions treaty. Russia's desire for a civilian nuclear agreement with the United States, which is the secondary "reset" agenda item right now, is also sure to be discussed.

A View from the Dark Side

No Worse Friend, No Better Enemy - Frank Gaffney in The Washington Times [link]

• The message of [the Obama adnministration's] policies and conduct is as unmistakable as it is ominous: Better to be an enemy of the United States than its friend.
• Under President Obama, Israel seems to have in the U.S. a friend in name only. American diplomacy did nothing to prevent passage of the Security Council's condemnatory resolution, focusing instead on making U.N. criticism of the Jewish state a tad more oblique.
• Then the United States supported a deeply problematic final document at the just-completed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference.
• In the process, Team Obama pledged to support a conference in 2012 whose stated purpose is to denuclearize Israel but says nothing about Iran. Here again, the administration acquiesced to better treatment for America's enemies than for its friends.