Word: russia
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...idea behind Obama's engagement effort, though, was that if Iran kept stalling, countries previously opposed to sanctions, such as Russia, China and Germany, could be persuaded to support new punitive measures aimed at forcing Iran to cooperate. "We actually believe that by following the diplomatic path we are on, we gain credibility and influence with a number of nations who would have to participate in order to make the sanctions regime as tight and as crippling as we would want it to be," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in last April. (See pictures...
...True, with Iran stalling, the Germans seem to be playing along, although earlier in the year they said they'd only support sanctions if approved by the U.N. And while senior American officials and European diplomats say Russia has come around to supporting sanctions, nothing that has happened publicly has confirmed that claim - and the signals from Moscow remain mixed...
...where Russia had previously taken the lead in blocking sanctions efforts, that role has now fallen to China, which has a rapidly growing stake in Iran's energy sector. Beijing believes that while Iran must be brought into compliance with the international nonproliferation regime, its nuclear program does not represent an imminent danger of producing nuclear weapons and diplomacy should therefore be given a lot more time...
...Beijing has bluntly opposed any effort to introduce new punitive measures against Iran, and last weekend China's Deputy Foreign Minister snubbed his counterparts from the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and Germany and sent only a low-level official to a meeting called to discuss new efforts to pressure Tehran. "The meeting we had last weekend was not great," says a European diplomat. "The Chinese sent someone along who said, 'I can't make any decisions.' " Worse, the Chinese have become allergic to the very mention of sanctions. After last weekend's meeting, a senior European diplomat speaking on background...
...Splitting the international community has been Iran's goal from the start, and unilateral sanctions could be fatally undermined if a bloc of countries that trade with Iran, such as China, Russia, Turkey and India, don't comply. The very fact that the U.S. and its allies are even thinking of going it alone is a sign of just how much trouble Obama's policy...