The title, Sanctions Effort May Open Door to Press Iran Central Bank, looked promising. The particulars, not so much.
American and European officials said Wednesday that the reference, passing though it is, could give them a legal basis in the future for choking off financial transactions between Iran and banking centers in Europe and elsewhere. Previous sanctions have taken aim at specific banks suspected of financing proscribed nuclear activity, but never anything as pivotal as dealings with the central bank itself.
What is notably absent from the draft resolution, however, is any binding restriction on transactions with Iran’s central bank. Among the many compromises that the United States accepted to get China and Russia to back new sanctions against Iran was an agreement to limit any reference to the bank — or Iran’s entire energy sector, for that matter — to the introductory paragraphs rather than the sanctions themselves, according to American officials and other diplomats, yielding a weaker resolution than the United States would have liked.
The haggling over the central bank illustrates both the opportunities and the frustrations that American and European officials see in the resolution. One the one hand, it provides an opportunity to expand the range of financial activity that the West can try to impede. On the other, it provides a loophole for any nation that wants to continue relations with Iran, allowing it to argue that a cut off is not mandatory.
So on the one hand the adminstration managed to get a bigger stick, on the other hand the administration there will be no way to wield it. It looks like the door to sanctions – to mix metaphors – remains shut.
But the Obama administration shows no interest in implementing such tough measures. Instead, we are left with empty posturing. One suspects that the president has already decided that a nuclear Iran is a done deal and that the U.S. should concentrate on containment and deterrence rather than on prevention. If so, I wish the White House would just come out and say so rather than pretending that this new sanctions resolution will achieve anything.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
