Quote: What Iran gained from today's U.N. vote to sanction its regime
The Obama administration is claiming a diplomatic triumph today with the U.N. Security Council’s passage of new sanctions against Iran. But the Iranian government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also has some reason for satisfaction. The resolution passed in New York, it can argue, is late, weak and more likely to ease than increase Iran’s diplomatic isolation.
It’s not hard to imagine the briefing an Iranian government spinner might be delivering in Tehran today. Consider, he might say, what President Obama once promised: that a refusal by Iran to begin serious negotiations about curbing its nuclear program would lead to “crippling” sanctions, beginning in the fall of 2009. During his presidential campaign, Obama even suggested that the sanctions would target Iran’s gasoline imports -- which many experts have described as the Achilles heel of its economy.
The sanctions approved today don’t touch Iran’s gasoline or its domestic energy sector. They will allow China to continue developing three large oil fields as well as oil refineries that will eliminate Iran’s need for gasoline imports. They will permit Russia to switch on the Busheir nuclear plant this summer. The Obama administration failed to obtain direct sanctions against Iran’s central bank or its state shipping line. And its ban on weapons sales contains a giant loophole: Russia will have the leeway to deliver an advanced anti-aircraft missile system, the S-300, which would be Iran’s best defense against an air attack on its nuclear installations by the United States or Israel.
By the way, Ahmadinejad’s spinner might add: the sanctions came six months later than the United States wanted. During that time Iran’s centrifuges have enriched more than 2,000 pounds of uranium, increasing a stockpile sufficient for one atomic bomb to one that could provide two with further enrichment. And the further enrichment has begun: Tehran has recently begun raising the enrichment level of part of its uranium from 3.5 percent to 20 percent -- still short of the 90 percent needed for weapons, but closer.
| 
