BICOM

Key Points

• Winning the support of Russia and China for additional UN backed sanctions against Iran and its nuclear programme represents a considerable diplomatic achievement. However, this achievement comes at the price of reducing the content and potential impact of the draft Security Council resolution.
• There is hope that the resolution’s provisions may nevertheless provide a basis for individual states to implement tougher measures.
• Whilst international efforts to address Iran’s nuclear programme are welcome in Israel, there are considerable doubts over whether it will lead to significant Iranian concessions.
• The emergence of a nuclear Iran would greatly destabilise the region, providing an umbrella for continued Iranian subversion, raising the potential for a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and the possibility of a terror organisation acquiring a WMD capability. It is by no means clear that sanctions will prove sufficient to prevent this. If Iran continues on its path towards nuclear weapons capability, Israeli policy-makers face extremely difficult decisions ahead.

Introduction

On the 18 May, a draft resolution proposing increased sanctions against Iran, in order to induce it to abandon its nuclear program, was agreed by all five permanent UN Security Council members. The announcement came a day after Brazil and Turkey made public a deal they had negotiated separately with Iran, whereby about half of Iran’s low-enriched uranium would be exported to Turkey where it would be turned into fuel rods. This deal is similar to one rejected by Iran several months ago. This analysis looks at the substance of the new proposed sanctions, and at the responses within Israel to this latest development. 

The resolution’s contents and prospects

The new draft sanctions resolution is backed by all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Achieving the support of Russia and China for additional sanctions against Iran represents a considerable diplomatic achievement for the United States, backed by Britain and France.  However, this achievement comes at the cost of significantly reducing the content and potential impact of the sanctions.

China blocked any measures to reduce Iranian oil exports and import of gasoline.  According to reports, the extensive energy relationship between Teheran and Beijing meant that the possibility of sanctions in this area was barely discussed in the deliberations leading up to the latest draft resolution. Russia’s main area of contention, meanwhile, was in the area of restricting sales of conventional weaponry to Iran.  Moscow has an extensive arms-sales relationship with Iran.

The draft resolution contains proposed sanctions on conventional arms sales, assistance, and training to Iran. However, it appears that the proposed register of weapons banned for sale to Iran specifically states that it “does not include ground-to-air missiles.”  Thus, Russian sales of the S-300 air defence system to Iran will not be affected by the resolution.  This system has been contracted by Iran, but Russia is thought to have not yet delivered it to the Iranians. It is particularly significant because the regime in Tehran is known to be seeking advanced air defence systems in order to protect its nuclear facilities from attack. 

The new draft resolution contains a significant six paragraph section on “illegal shipments”, which authorises the inspection of ships and planes bound for Iran if there is information providing reasonable grounds to believe that the vessel is carrying prohibited items.  However, again, the draft has built in limitations. Most importantly, it stipulates that the consent of the “flag state” – that is the state under whose flag the ship is sailing – must be given before a search can be carried out. States such as North Korea, which is known to play a major role in Iranian arms and missile supply, would be unlikely to accept such a search, limiting the efficacy of the measure. 

The draft resolution extends asset freezes to more individuals and entities associated with proliferation, including the Iranian Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), targeted by unilateral UK measures last year, and as yet unspecified elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It also proposes to increase the capacity of the UN to enforce the sanctions regime. However, a wide range of the new proposals in the financial sphere are non-binding, only calling on states to “exercise vigilance” toward certain activities including transactions with Iranian banks and with companies associated with the IRGC. These provisions are widely seen as providing a basis for individual states which wish to implement laws or regulations boosting scrutiny of the activities of their own nationals who do business with Iran.

Prospects for the resolution

The content of the resolution reflects the tension between wanting to keep all sides on board and the need to prevent excessive watering down of the measures. In this regard, it should be noted that the passing of the resolution in its current form is not certain. The Turkish-Brazilian proposal is not dead. Some Western diplomats have described Turkey and Brazil as naïve dupes to Iran’s game of prevarication. Other commentators, however, have called on the Brazil-Turkey deal to be given a chance, and accused the P5 powers of “petulance” in their negative reaction to the emerging powers making a deal over their heads.

If implemented, a deal to remove some enriched uranium from Iran would temporarily reduce the stockpile of raw material available for nuclear weapons. But due to the fact that the stockpile is constantly growing, the significance and utility of such an arrangement is declining all the time. The arrangement would also not deal with the substantive problems of Iran’s ongoing enrichment, or the IAEA’s unanswered questions over Iran’s alleged weaponisation research.

No date has been set for a vote on the new draft UN sanctions resolution, and Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the UN, said that this would take place only when all Council members had a chance to consider the document and when “conditions are right.”  At least a month is expected to pass before any vote. It remains to be seen how the Security Council members will absorb the new set of diplomatic options on the table.

Israel’s response to the new draft resolution

There is a consensus in Israel that a nuclear armed Iran would be extremely dangerous for Israel and the region. The Israeli fear is not simply that Iran might use a nuclear weapon against Israel. They also fear the proliferation of nuclear materials to terrorists, the triggering of an Arab nuclear arms race, and the impact on the Israeli economy, and national morale, of living in the shadow of an Iranian bomb.

Israel has long been lobbying, in public and in private, for the firmest possible measures to be taken against Iran through the UN Security Council, arguing that tough sanctions are the best way to force Iran to stop its march to nuclear weapons capability. However, the Israeli government has maintained an uncharacteristic silence in response to the latest developments.

Israeli officials privately noted that the draft resolution lacked the tough provisions that Jerusalem believes are necessary to force Iran to rethink its policy. In this regard, the absence of sanctions targeting the energy sector is seen as of particular importance. However, Israel has long stressed that the Iranian nuclear program is a problem for the whole international community, not for Israel alone, even though Israel is the only country threatened with destruction by the regime in Tehran. As one official  put it: “We always knew that a UN resolution would require international consensus and would be watered down without the teeth we hoped for. Nevertheless we support the resolution. It shows the international community united acting against the Iranian program. It’s an important symbolic act.”

This statement captures well the dilemma faced also by the West in negotiating the resolution. While there is a theoretical international consensus against a nuclear armed Iran, different countries have widely divergent levels of concern regarding this issue, and widely differing interests in the region which inform their levels of concern. As a result, not only is the sanctions regime that has been put in place in the last few years watered down, but many of Iran’s trading partners have simply ignored it. 

This, however, works both ways. Israel hopes that unilateral actions taken by the United States and allied countries, on the basis of a strict interpretation of the new draft resolution, may result in measures that may have a greater effect on the Iranian economy.

Should the proposed resolution be passed, there is no doubt that its impact would be an appreciable increase in the cost to Iran of pursuing its nuclear programme. However, while such results are desirable, there remains a large gap between this and measures which would prove sufficient to induce Iran to reverse or abandon its nuclear drive.

Current and former Israeli officials express doubt as to whether the sanctions resolution, even if passed, implemented, and unilaterally improved upon by Western states, would prove sufficient.  Ephraim Ascoulai, a former official at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, told reporters that “the sanctions will be ineffective, come too late, it won’t achieve anything in the way. I don’t think it will change Iran’s timetable by an iota.”

Defence analysts Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff wrote last week in Haaretz, following a recent simulation by an Israeli think-tank looking at the impact of the emergence of a nuclear Iran: “The United States may still succeed in its attempts to impose international sanctions, but those sanctions seem unlikely to derail the mullahs from their efforts, with the probability of an American military strike seeming even slimmer.”

There are therefore those in Israel who increasingly fear that the Obama administration may privately assess that a nuclear Iran is inevitable, and may be moving toward laying the groundwork for a strategy of containment.  

Conclusion

The emergence of a nuclear Iran would greatly destabilise the region, providing an umbrella for continued Iranian subversion, possibly triggering a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and raising the possibility of a terror organisation acquiring a WMD capability. A nuclear-armed state publicly committed to the destruction of the Jewish state is a nightmare scenario for Israeli policy makers. Whilst the high degree of international attention now being focussed on stopping Iran acquiring nuclear weapons capability is welcome in Israel, Israelis are not optimistic that it will prove successful. As such, Israel’s leaders face tough decisions ahead.