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Analysis: About Those Nukes, Iran .

Council on Foreign Relations

July 31, 2006
Prepared by: Lionel Beehner

Iran has until the end of August to halt its enrichment of uranium and all other "research and development" activities or face the threat of sanctions. So declares the UN Security Council in its latest resolution, which passed fourteen to one (Qatar opposed). Should Tehran choose not to comply, under Article 41 of Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, the Security Council can consider multilateral sanctions. Iran indicated it would not respond before August 22 (Bloomberg).

The resolution is legally binding under international law and is the most strongly worded ultimatum to date. An earlier version of the ultimatum called for immediate sanctions but pressure from China and Russia led to more ambiguous language. Both have shied away from imposing punitive measures against Iran, a major energy supplier. Iran has yet to signal whether it will accept a package of energy, commercial, and technological incentives proposed in June by the permanent five members of the Security Council and Germany but maintains it has the right, granted under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to peaceful nuclear technology.

The latest round of demands on Iran comes amid an escalating crisis in the Middle East between Hezbollah and Israel. A number of analysts suggest that Iran arranged for Hezbollah to attack Israel, or at least encouraged the incursion, to distract attention from its nuclear activities and assert itself as a regional hegemon. "In Tehran, a dogmatic leadership imbued with messianic aims is both behind Hezbollah's forays and capitalizing on them to establish itself as the vanguard of political Islam," writes CFR Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh in the International Herald Tribune. Hezbollah's incursion into Israel also sends "the signal that any international pressure on [Iran's] nuclear program would meet with strong resistance, says CFR President Richard Haass.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.