Opinion: A hidden deal on Iran sanctions?

Since Russia and China will not be on board, one can only hope the Obama Administration has other plans, writes David J. Kramer.

David J. KramerOctober 17, 2009 09:11Updated May 30, 2010 12:10

A masked exiled Iranian man protests outside the Geneva headquarters of the U.N. during a meeting on nuclear power in Iran, Oct. 1, 2009. Six world powers met with Iran in Switzerland for talks at which U.S. officials said it was necessary for Tehran to show it was not hiding plans for a nuclear bomb. (Ruben Sprich/Reuters)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — For those hoping the international community might finally be getting more serious about possible sanctions against Iran for its continued defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, the headlines this week were downright discouraging. “In Face of Sanctions Push, China Warms Up to Iran,” The New York Times declared on Friday. “China Lauds Ties with Iran,” according to Thursday's Wall Street Journal. And, as Charles Krauthammer noted in his column in Friday’s Washington Post, his own paper said on Wednesday: “Russian Not Budging on Iran Sanctions; Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart.”

None of this, of course, should be a major surprise in light of the Oct. 1 meeting in Geneva of the so-called P5+1 with Iran. At that meeting, Iranian representatives agreed to a process by which Iran might let in international inspectors and might send lightly enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment. Russia and China have been hoping for that process, which removes the need for even any talk of sanctions, let alone the sanctions themselves.

Russian and Chinese resistance to sanctions is certainly not new. Several U.N. resolutions against Iran passed during the Bush Administration were severely watered down at the insistence of Moscow and Beijing. Now, those capitals don’t even want to talk about the possibility of taking U.N. action against Tehran. It would be “premature,” in the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Added Prime Minister Vladimir Putin several thousand miles away in Beijing: “There is no need to frighten the Iranians” with talk of sanctions. “If now, before making any steps we start announcing some sanctions,” Putin said, “then we won’t be creating favorable conditions for talks to end positively. This is why it is premature to talk about this now.”

Despite this crystal clear rejection from Russia, Clinton voiced optimism in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that if sanctions become necessary, “we will have support from Russia.” Her optimism apparently is based on what U.S. officials claim she was told by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday. These same officials got carried away when Medvedev, in New York for the U.N. General Assembly session last month, criticized sanctions but said they might be inevitable anyway. Alas, for those of us no longer working in the government, we can rely only on Lavrov’s and Putin’s public comments to divine Russia’s position. And based on those comments — and the fact that it is Putin, much more so than Medvedev, who is calling the shots in Russia on issues of this importance — Clinton’s optimism seems sadly misplaced.