The US is spearheading the push to initiate more sanctions against Iran. This move is an attempt to protect the US and specifically Israel against unauthorized nuclear attacks. If Iran gets nukes they probably wont hesitate to attack US targets in the Middle East and Israel.
The U.N.s nuclear watchdog agency says that it appears Tehran has worked on designing an atom bomb. While Russia and China seem to agree there are legitimate concerns about Irans nuclear ambitions, the two powers appear ready to block any new move to impose additional sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. Why? One is that they are allies with the Iranians and they have probably supplied most of the materials.
The U.N Security Council, has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran from 2006 to 2010. The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency has raised the prospect that Irans nuclear file could come back to the Security Council for a possible fifth round of economic, financial or military sanctions. As you can see here sanctions are not doing the job. The reason is that actions to cut Iran off are obviously being sabotaged. The question then is by who? The countries which border Iran are to blame for the most part but I believe that Russia and China at the very least have not been supporting the actions of the UN.
The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the IAEA report as having no new information and warned that it is being used to undermine efforts to reach a political and diplomatic resolution to the issue. While Beijing has repeated its call for dialogue and said sanctions would not resolve the matter.
American University International Politics professor David Bosco says the U.N. Security Council is running out of sanctions options and only the toughest remain which will include targeting Irans Central Bank or its oil and gas exports.
Russia and China did not use their veto power on the previous four rounds of sanctions, but they also used their influence to make sure the sanctions were not as strong as Western powers wanted them to be.
The Iranians have halfheartedly declared that their nuclear ambitions are peaceful, but then they have said otherwise. They have also declared that they have the right to pursue ownership of nuclear weapons which is true, but I take the side of those who dont want to see them armed with such formidable power.
The best that we can do right now is to slow down their development of these weapons, especially without more help from the Russians and the Chinese. If the latest round of sanctions does not stop the Iranians from developing these weapons there might not be a future choice but to use the military option. This too will be very difficult to execute and the fallout of such an action is totally unpredictable. It is not certain that if we attacked their nuclear facilities that we would destroy everything that we needed to destroy. Let me take it a step farther and say that it is highly improbable that we would.
Military Ring Express
