Reuters, Vienna,  Jan 22, 2011 – Iran may face intensifying sanctions pressure from the West after the Islamic Republic and world powers failed to make any progress towards resolving the dispute over Tehran’s nuclear plans at a meeting in Istanbul.
But it is uncertain whether such punitive measures can succeed in forcing Iran’s hardline leadership, which uses the country’s nuclear advances to rally nationalist support at home, to back down and curb its atomic activities.
’I don’t see that the Iranian side can or will give in,’ said Shannon Kile, a proliferation expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Two days of seemingly fruitless discussions in the Turkish city between Iran and the six powers — the United States, France, Germany, China, Russia and Britain — ended on Saturday without even an agreement on when and where to meet again.
’This certainly gives Washington reason to push for further measures,’ Mark Fitzpatrick, a former senior U.S. State Department official now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a think-tank in London.
’But I don’t think this is the end of diplomacy.’
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the door remained open for more talks but the outcome was clearly disappointing for her and other Western officials, even if no one had expected any major breakthrough.
The powers had hoped for signs that Iran would be willing to start addressing their concerns about its nuclear programme, which the West fears is aimed at making bombs but Tehran says is designed for peaceful power generation.
Iran’s delegation, headed by chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, made clear from the outset that the country’s ’nuclear rights’ were not negotiable, including uranium enrichment — the activity which most worries the West.
’I wonder if Iranian negotiators didn’t have a very narrow negotiating mandate from the capital,’ Kile said, adding this could reflect divisions in Tehran on how to proceed.
Ashton, who led the big powers’ delegation, put forward a revised proposal for a nuclear fuel swap, seen by the West as a possible way to build confidence for broader nuclear talks.
’PRESSURE TRACK’
But the meeting ended without any result on this or other ideas to reduce mutual mistrust, even if a senior U.S. official said there had been no breakdown in the talks.
In the previous session between the two sides in Geneva in early December, which also made no concrete headway in easing the standoff, there was at least an agreement to have another meeting in Istanbul at the end of January.
The Istanbul talks underlined the wide divide and how increasingly tough sanctions on Iran, a major oil producer, have so far had little effect in persuading it to change course.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the possibility earlier this week of further increasing such pressure, telling U.S. network ABC the Obama administration may propose new unilateral measures against Iran.
’I don’t want to speculate on what decisions will get made. There are certainly options there for the pressure track,’ a senior U.S. official said in Istanbul after the talks ended.
Any U.S. push to again tighten such pressure on Iran may anger Russia, which voted for a fourth round of U.N. sanctions last June, but which criticised subsequent unilateral steps by the United States and the 27-nation EU.
Western officials say the sanctions are hurting the Iranian economy, even though a higher oil price may blunt the impact.
Bruno Tertrais, an Iran expert at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, said the most efficient sanctions had been those implemented by Washington and the EU, which include measures targeting Iran’s vital oil and gas sectors.
’I think that there will be … an attempt to intensify the implementation of existing sanctions,’ SIPRI’S Kile said.
Both Iran and the powers had signalled readiness to resume talks on a proposal to exchange Iranian low-enriched uranium (LEU) for higher-grade fuel to be used in a research reactor.
But they remain far apart on how to carry out such a swap, which was tentatively agreed in late 2009 but later unravelled after Iran backed away from its terms. It would have reduced Tehran’s stockpile of potential bomb material.
’I don’t think Jalili was in any position to be able to show any flexibility. They will have to study it,’ Fitzpatrick said, referring to Ashton’s proposal which would require Iran to send abroad most of its LEU, something it has resisted.
’Iran’s tactics would not have allowed much real movement forward and if there is going to be any breakthrough, it might require some less public manoeuvring, some way in which the two sides can meet quietly to explore possibilities,’ he said.