Face-off with Iran takes tougher turn
Tehran spurned UN Security Council sanctions Sunday as it still held 15 British captives.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the March 26, 2007 edition
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BAGHDAD - From the United Nations in New York to the Shatt al-Arab waterway that splits southern Iran and Iraq, the ongoing row over Iran's nuclear program turned decidedly more confrontational over the weekend.
The UN Security Council Saturday unanimously agreed to widen economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic, taking aim at the country's arms exports, state bank, and its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps.
But new UN demands to suspend uranium enrichment are prompting more belligerence from Iran, as the country appears to be shifting its policy of avoiding confrontation to "following their traditional aggressive policies [pursued since the] Islamic revolution" of 1979, says Saeed Leylaz, an independent analyst in Tehran.
Signaling that it will not be bullied, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard seized 15 British sailors and marines that Tehran says were engaged in "blatant aggression" inside its waters on Friday along its disputed riverine border with Iraq. Britain denies that its crews entered Iranian waters.
While the new UN resolution is far weaker than what the US, Britain, and France first proposed, it "is a very big step toward surrounding [Iran]. The US is going step by step to surround the country militarily, economically, and politically," says Mr. Leylaz. "They are surrounding us, and [so] the British sailors have been arrested because Iran is trying to warn Western countries that it will perceive these new sanctions as enemy [actions]."
Measures of the sanctions vote reach beyond Iran's nuclear program, and are directed at individuals and the Revolutionary Guard Corps – the powerful, ideological force separate from the regular army – to limit Iran's growing influence across the region.
Washington is trying to "change the actions and behavior" of Iran, Nicholas Burns, the US under secretary of State for political affairs, told The New York Times. "And so the sanctions are immediately focused on the nuclear weapons research program, but we also are trying to limit the ability of Iran to be a disruptive and violent factor in Middle East politics."
Iran's reaction was given in New York by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, in lieu of a planned visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Tehran claimed that the US "deliberately" failed to issue visas on time for the president's flight crew, a charge US officials deny.
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