BICOM

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid will ask the US Senate to approve a new package of oil and economic sanctions today aimed at further pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear programme, a Democratic leadership aide told Reuters.

The sanctions are focused on foreign banks that handle transactions for Iran’s national oil and tanker companies, and include measures to close loopholes in existing sanctions.

The sanctions build on restrictions signed into law by President Barack Obama in December that have made it difficult for Tehran, the world’s third-largest petroleum exporter, to sell its oil, in a bid to cut the flow of revenues suspected of supporting its nuclear programme.

The move comes ahead of negotiations beginning on 23 May in Baghdad between Iran and world powers concerned about Tehran’s nuclear programme.

In related news, according to an unnamed western diplomat cited in Reuters, Iran is installing more centrifuges in an underground plant, but does not yet appear to be using them to expand higher-grade uranium enrichment that could take it closer to producing material for an atom bomb.

Getting Iran to stop the higher-level enrichment is expected to be a priority for the P5+1 (the UN Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany) when they meet with Iran in Baghdad next week.

“It is still going strong. I hear it is unchanged,” one diplomat accredited to the UN nuclear watchdog, which regularly inspects Iran’s declared atomic sites, told Reuters about the country’s nuclear activity. “But with installation work going on, at some point there will be an increase.”

Tehran took large strides towards making weapons-grade nuclear material after the previous attempt at diplomacy failed. Rejecting the UN’s demands to halt all enrichment, Iran instead ramped up uranium processing to 20 per cent purity. In turn, this triggered the West to impose the current round of tough sanctions on its banks and oil exports.