Word: diplomats
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...ease with which the Iranian regime has shrugged off those sanctions bodes ill for future success, at least so long as hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is President. If anything, Iran seemed to ratchet up its defiance a month ago, when Ali Larijani, a diplomat whom European negotiators viewed as a relative moderate, was replaced as chief nuclear negotiator by a close political ally of Ahmadinejad. Sources in Tehran say that switch could not have been made without the approval of Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei - a discouraging fact for those in the West who had hoped Khamenei might be tiring...
...Since the beginning of the diplomatic face-off with Iran, the Bush Administration has been acutely aware that there are limits to the willingness of the international community to enforce sanctions. The E.U., composed of 27 member states, is Iran's biggest trading partner, accounting for 27.8% of the country's trade in 2006. Russia has a range of commercial contracts with Iran, among them an agreement to help construct Iran's first nuclear power plant at Bushehr. And energy-hungry China has not hesitated throughout the nuclear standoff to sign new oil and gas deals with Iran. Such economic...
...community (banks in other countries did not want to jeopardize their U.S. business by trading with Banco Delta Asia), thus severely restricting the North Koreans' access to their accounts. Meting out similar treatment to Iran "is going after them with a stiletto rather than a blunderbuss," says one Western diplomat...
...lite cadre of government figures, Angolan bosses and foreign oil companies holds on to the soar-away gains of its 35% growth while the country stagnates in destitution and inflation. Partly that's due to the lack of a diversified economy to harness the oil wealth. As a foreign diplomat puts it, "If you're dying of thirst, you can't drink from a fire hose. The water comes out too fast." But it's also due to corruption: a 2004 Human Rights Watch report claimed that $4.22 billion in oil revenues went missing from Angola from...
...lift the emergency degree and hold elections in early January. Negroponte will also try to revive the Musharraf-Bhutto deal, but some in the Administration recognize that can no longer be the only option. "If it becomes more and more clear that [Musharraf] is not budging," says a Western diplomat in Islamabad, "then certainly you start thinking of alternatives...