Word: iran
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...Administration is turning to coercion through tighter sanctions in an effort to press Iran into changing its position. And Tehran's defiance is helping Washington make its case. A British newspaper recently published what it claimed was new evidence that Iran is developing weapons components, although the authenticity of the documents concerned has yet to be established. But Tehran's lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency will likely compel even Russia and China to support some uptick in U.N. sanctions...
...Still, while Moscow and Beijing may back some escalation of measures targeting Iran's nuclear program, they remain resistant to anything resembling the "crippling sanctions" previously threatened by Secretary Clinton. Their resistance, as well as that of Iran's key neighbors, to measures that would hurt ordinary Iranians, suggests that unilateral steps such as the legislation recently approved by the House of Representatives to choke off Iran's gasoline imports are unlikely to generate sufficient pressure to change Iran's behavior. (See the top 10 Ahmadinejad-isms...
...Obama, for all his game-changing intentions, end up inheriting Bush's Iran stalemate? Two key factors have combined to scupper his diplomatic efforts: Iran's domestic political year of living dangerously, and the fact that the new Administration bound its diplomacy to tight deadlines and to the same goal as its predecessor - persuading Iran to abandon uranium enrichment, even for peaceful purposes. That combination of factors was clear in the fate of the Tehran Research Reactor fuel deal, which Obama's own deadline had turned into a kind of last-chance ultimatum...
...says Tehran simply wants to ship out its uranium in smaller parcels and over a longer time period, rather than in the single immediate shipment demanded by the West. But the Western powers are unwilling to change the terms of the deal, because their prime objective is to deplete Iran's stockpile in order to temporarily remove its capacity to build a bomb. (See pictures of people around the world protesting Iran's election...
...Iran, which insists its uranium enrichment is purely for peaceful purposes, rejects the notion that its stockpile is a security threat. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters had initially trumpeted the deal as a great victory because, they said, it represented the West tacitly accepting Iran's right to enrichment. But for Washington and its allies, it was simply a "first step" toward a deal to end enrichment in Iran. Although Iran is entitled to peaceful enrichment as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S., Israel, France and Britain insist that Iran can't be trusted to exercise...