Word: iran
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Tehran could use all these stopgap methods to buy time - which is all it really needs to do. Chinese firms and, until recently, India's Reliance, have been working on massive upgrades of the country's refineries. "If Iran can maintain its refinery upgrades, they'll be self-sufficient in gas by 2013," says Dalton. (Watch TIME's exclusive interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
...officials believe going after oil imports may still be worth it. Rather than passing laws or attempting to push new sanctions through the U.N. Security Council - where Russia and China could veto them - officials are quietly approaching companies directly, convincing executives that the cost of doing business with Iran has become too high. In the past few months, Washington has leaned on insurance companies that underwrite Iran's shipments abroad and as many as 80 banks that handle financial transactions for the country. In January, the U.S. slapped a $350 million fine on Britain's Lloyds TSB Bank for funneling...
...message seems to be getting across. The French energy giant Total recently failed to bid on a major block in Iran's South Pars field - the world's biggest natural gas field - after spending years eyeing the business. Like other energy companies, it calculated that its Iran business was becoming a problem it could live without...
...drama of last week's revelation that Iran has been secretly building an underground uranium-enrichment facility may have raised expectations that this week's Geneva talks would be a kind of high-noon showdown. Instead, the meeting on Oct. 1 between Iran's nuclear negotiator and representatives of the Western powers and Russia and China is more likely to be the opening exchange of a tortuous conversation that will continue for months...
...renewal of talks with Tehran follows President Barack Obama's warning to Iran that it must discuss Western concerns about its nuclear program or else face a new round of sanctions. But Iran has hardly been in an accommodating mood. A week ago it wrote to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to reveal that it was building a uranium-enrichment facility in the mountains near Qom. (Obama announced the existence of the hitherto secret facility four days later, and U.S. officials claimed that Tehran had preempted him only because it was aware that it had been caught red-handed...