With Iran seemingly rejecting the end-of-year deadline for making diplomatic progress with the West, and the Chinese government continuing to voice opposition to imposing additional sanctions in the United Nations Security Council against the rogue regime, the Obama administration has been preparing other possible additional ways of sanctioning Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons, ABC News has learned…
Officials cautioned that the official decision to pursue sanctions has not yet been made, that sanction efforts outside the UN would be several months away, and that emphasizing them revealed a far more pessimistic view of developments than they currently hold…
Additionally, European sources tell ABC News that European nations are beginning to explore sanctions on their own national levels and at the level of the European Union because they recognize that the UN measures will likely not end up being tough enough if and when they finally pass.
I wonder how much of this is motivated by the dysfunction of Copenhagen, where the Chinese proved how hard a bargain they’re willing to drive. If the conference was good for nothing else, maybe at least it served as a lesson to The One that he can’t count on international institutions to address common problems (his Nobel speech notwithstanding). For once, he has bipartisan support in Congress for turning up the heat and a populist opportunity inside the country, thanks to the Ayatollah Montazeri’s death, to frame the sanctions as aimed at getting the regime to follow the liberal Montazeri model. If he doesn’t make some sort of move after the December 31 deadline expires, either at the UN or at home, the credibility he built by ordering the Afghanistan surge is shot.
Here’s Ahmadinejad telling a “respectable lady” that he laughs at our western deadlines.
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