In the better-than-nothing category, President Obama is touting the UN Security Council vote today to impose another round of sanctions on the Islamic regime in Tehran. “The vote “sends an unmistakable message about the international community’s commitment to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons,” President Barack Obama said Wednesday at the White House.” Whether it is threatening the nuclear non-proliferation regime, or the human rights of its own citizens, or the stability of its own neighbors by supporting terrorism, the Iranian government continues to demonstrate that its own unjust actions are a threat to justice everywhere.”
The administration has been touting or months the need for as broad a coalition as possible to sign on to the sanctions. They did get Russia and China to agree to these new sanctions, but not Turkey or Brazil. Lebanon abstained bringing the vote tally to 12-3.
The important questions now are: 1. Will any sanctions make a difference at this point; and 2. how watered-down are these new sanctions so as to make the palatable to Russia and China who actually want to keep on doing lots of business with Iran?
Foreign Affairs’ Christopher Wall says these sanctions are so weak they hardly seem worth it. “At various points in the previous months, Barack Obama’s administration has promised that these sanctions will be ‘crippling,’ ‘smart,’ and ‘targeted.’ In reality, however, the best adjective to describe the new sanctions is ‘ineffective.’”
Wall also doesn’t see how these sanctions are going to change Iran’s behavior any. Take even the tougher provisions as an example: “One of the resolution’s few mandatory provisions requires countries to prohibit Tehran from acquiring an interest in commercial activity involving uranium mining, as well as production or use of nuclear materials and technology. Iran has been seeking to acquire uranium from Venezuela and Bolivia, which this resolution might affect. Prohibiting investment in a mine, however, will not stop Iran from buying the ore extracted from it.”
Michael Rubin meanwhile critiques the “accomplishment” of these new sanctions because he says Obama gave away the store to Russia in order to get them. “In order to win Russia’s support, for instance, Obama gave the Kremlin concessions involving Georgia, Poland, and the Czech Republic, and also gave Tehran months more to enrich; the Islamic Republic now has enough low-enriched uranium to make sufficient high-enriched uranium for two bombs.”
And Iran’s response, while predictable certainly doesn’t make it sound like they are worried. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad basically announced that any talk of negotiations with the West, especially the US, over the Iranian nuclear program is dead and buried. That was already true before the new sanctions so perhaps it’s some kind of victory that now the Mullahs have made it official.