WASHINGTON, Aug 18: The United States intends to act next month to have the United Nations impose penalties on Iran for refusing to stop enrichment of uranium, a State Department official said.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters he expected the UN would impose sanctions on Tehran if it does not give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran is expected to announce its intentions on Aug 22.
“I think we would want to move very quickly in the first part of September toward a debate in the Security Council about sanctions. They will be well deserved as this has gone on a long time.”
Mr Burns’s threat contrasts sharply with a statement by 22 former US military and diplomatic officials who urged the Bush administration on Thursday to engage in direct negotiations with Iran ‘without preconditions’, and cautioned against using military force.
“An attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for security in the region and US forces in Iraq, and it would inflame hatred and violence in the Middle East and among Muslims everywhere,” the former officials said.
Apparently unimpressed by the advice, Mr Burns said the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon has only strengthened the world’s resolve, because Iran is believed to have been helping the organisation with weapons and advice.
“I think our hand is strengthened,” he said. “I think there is greater concern about the role of Iran in the Middle East than before ... I really think Iran is quite isolated.”
But former US generals and senior diplomats advised the White House to reconsider its Middle East policies, particularly those relating to Iran.
Lt Gen Robert G. Gard, one of the signatories and a former military assistant to Defence Secretary Robert S. McNamara in the 1960s, said the group believed the Bush administration’s recent statements about Iran could be a possible prelude to a military attack on suspected nuclear sites in that country.
Gen Gard said the signatories — who included retired Marine Corps Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, head of US Central Command from 1991 to 1994, and Morton H. Halperin, a senior State Department and National Security Council official during the Clinton administration — did not believe that Iran had the wherewithal to build a nuclear weapon in the immediate future and would push the administration to open negotiations on the issue.
In an interview to a US media outlet, Gen Gard disagreed with the Bush administration’s depiction of the Iranian situation as ‘a crisis’.
“It’s not a crisis. To call the Iranian situation a ‘crisis’ connotes you have to do something right now, like bomb them,” Gen Gard said.
He noted that Iran had sought to open negotiations with the US through Swiss intermediaries.