Diplomacy drags
Too slow for comfort 

March 30, 2006
The Economist
Original Source: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6754891&fsrc=nwl

IF THE idea was for the United Nations Security Council to glare down Iran over its troubling nuclear activities, taking a full three weeks to draft a non-binding statement calling on the regime to end activities already deplored repeatedly at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear guardian, is hardly an impressive start. Iran in any case says it will go on enriching uranium (a possible bomb ingredient). So the question for the foreign ministers of America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China—the six countries most closely involved in the diplomacy—meeting in Berlin on March 30th was: what should they do next? 
The initiative, they contend, is now with Iran. But putting a diplomatic end to Iran's nuclear defiance was never going to be easy. Britain, France and Germany had called off two-and-a-half years of fruitless talks last August, after Iran ended an agreed suspension of some nuclear work. Its decision in January to restart actual enrichment-related activities helped propel its case to the Security Council last month. 
At Russia's insistence, the council's first rap on Iran's knuckles talks only of “serious concern” at its continuing activities, backs the IAEA's inspectors in their efforts to figure out what Iran is really up to (exploring ways to keep the lights on, it says; building a bomb is what others suspect) and calls for another report from them in 30 days. And if Iran still refuses to suspend its enrichment work?
The six are divided. Russia, backed by China, refused this week to have Iran's nuclear activities declared a “threat to peace and security”, since this could open the door to tougher action in future. Getting from this week's statement by the Security Council's president to binding and enforceable resolutions, passed under Chapter Seven of the UN charter, will be a lot tougher. But without that, suggested a recently leaked British memo, Iran is unlikely to pay much attention. At the very least, the memo argued, as a next step the council ought to make suspension of further nuclear work by Iran mandatory. 
Would Russia go along with a strategy that would need the credible threat of sanctions to back it up? Like the others, it wants Iran to suspend enrichment and doubts its peaceful intent. Like them, it has been alarmed by recent threatening statements from Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In an effort to win more time for talks, it has offered (unsuccessfully so far) to enrich uranium on Iran's behalf. But some of the obvious measures if Iran remains defiant—suspending nuclear and military trade, for example—would damage Russia's commercial interests. With Iraq in mind, both China and Russia balk at more forceful action too.
The British have suggested that, to help win Russian and Chinese agreement for tougher measures, another package of proposals might have to be put to Iran (it turned the Europeans' last lot down flat without even reading them). America, however, though trying to avoid actions that would unite Iranians behind the regime, does not want to be seen to be rewarding its rule-breaking. 
Stepping up the pressure on Iran requires the Security Council to stick together. Hence the patient efforts of recent weeks to keep Russia on side. But patience is not inexhaustible. Earlier this month, America's latest National Security Strategy picked out Iran as a—perhaps the—major security challenge; for confrontation to be avoided, it said, diplomacy has to succeed. 
Iran is already experimenting with uranium-enriching centrifuges and building its first proper cascade of them as fast as it can at its enrichment plant at Natanz. The more the diplomacy is dragged out, the closer Iran gets to learning all the enrichment skills it would need for bomb-making. That is not an outcome that will keep the big powers working together at the Security Council.