Via Laura Rozen, the United Nations Security Council is expected to vote on a new round of Iran sanctions Wednesday.
The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote on a new Iran sanctions resolution on Wednesday, two diplomatic sources have told POLITICO.
“The goal is Wednesday,” one European diplomat said of the anticipated vote date.
“Vote is likely Wednesday,” another diplomatic source in New York said.
The UN vote, which is likely to pass 12-3 with Turkey, Brazil and Lebanon voting nay, is expected to have two major impacts. The first will be to take the pressure off of the Congressional sanctions push.
Congress, which has been finalizing legislation sanctions Iran’s petroleum imports for weeks, had up until recently written off the UN process as weak and ineffectual. But recently, Democratic leaders have slowed things down to give the UN time to approve its own measure, which the Obama Administration insists will serve as a useful “legal platform” for further sanctions that individual countries agree to impose.
Now that the UN is planning to go ahead with its resolution, Congress might become more open to some of the Administration’s requests for changes in the final version of the bill (many of which echoed NIAC’s own suggested changes to the legislation).
The second thing that is sure to be effected by UN action is the proposed fuel swap deal negotiated by Brazil and Turkey. But it’s difficult to say what that impact will be: either the deal continues ahead, or (perhaps more likely) it could be blown to bits.
As a group of prominent nonproliferation and Iran experts have said, the nuclear fuel swap — while inadequate in the eyes of some — is a worthwhile diplomatic opening that the US would do well to exploit. But it’s hard to tell at this moment whether Iran will live up to its promise of walking away from any deal following a new sanctions resolution. Prominent lawmaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar said last week:
If (the West) issues a new resolution against Iran, we will not be committed to Tehran’s statement and dispatching fuel outside Iran will be canceled.
So there’s a lot at stake here, and it all hinges on how Iran reacts to the upcoming sanctions vote. For the US, that will mean either Obama runs the table — passing new sanctions in the UN and Congress, removing one bomb’s worth of nuclear material from Iran, and possibly even kick-starting comprehensive negotiations over important issues like human rights and the nuclear issue; or new sanctions that no one thinks will actually change Iran’s behavior.
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