Iran sanctions deadline passes

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The plan was to use direct engagement as the carrot and punishing economic sanctions as the stick, but neither carrot nor stick seems sufficient to persuade Iran’s tottering regime to curb its nuclear ambitions.

The Obama administration’s end-of-the-year deadline for an agreement with Tehran has quietly slipped by and the new deadline now appears to be May, ahead of the review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Whatever hopes Washington and its European allies may have had for presenting Iran with a credible threat of sanctions evaporated last week when China sent the diplomatic equivalent of third-string benchwarmer to a varsity level meeting of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany.

The meeting was called to discuss a new round of sanctions, but all that was agreed was to try again in a teleconference at a later date.

Although the Chinese foot-dragging is frustrating to the United States, it may be a benefit in disguise.

Iran’s deeply unpopular government, an uneasy marriage of convenience between conservative mullahs and the hardline Revolutionary Guard Corps, clings to power by resorting to increasingly repressive measures against a reform movement that is growing in strength.

Meanwhile, nuclear experts believe that Iran’s program to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel has run into significant technical problems and that many of its centrifuges are not working, either because of design problems or possible sabotage.

“So it seems there is a little more time available. Why not sit on the sidelines a little while and watch the political process play out in Iran,” said Christian Koch, a security specialist at the Gulf Research Center, a Dubai think tank.

Koch said it was “short-sighted” to think that an agreement was possible with the current regime, given the severe stresses that it now faces.

“And even if you achieved a deal tomorrow, who could trust it? Who could say that in six months time, they won’t change their mind,” he said.

But having threatened sanctions, Washington and its allies are under pressure to do something. Acting on its own, the U.S. House of Representatives last month passed legislation that would impose sanctions on foreign companies that provide Iran with gasoline. The Senate is expected to follow suit later this month.

Despite being the world’s fourth largest oil producer, Iran has very a very limited refining capacity and must import almost 40 percent of its gasoline. But most experts say the gasoline sanctions would punish ordinary Iranians, undercut the opposition and strengthen the hand of the Revolutionary Guard.

“All you’re doing with that is hurting the broad population, and that only helps the regime,” said the GRC’s Koch.

Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University and a former member of the National Security Council, described the proposed legislation in his blog as “the worst idea to come out of the Congress since they opposed the purchase of Alaska.”

Instead, the Obama administration has spoken of sanctions that would spare ordinary Iranians and target the Revolutionary Guards, who now control a wide swath of the Iranian economy.

Koch said that “highly targeted” sanctions aimed at banks and front companies controlled by the Revolutionary Guards could have a “modest” impact.

“But the main thing is you don’t want to give the government anything to rally the population around them,” he said.

Other options under discussion include restrictions on shipping insurance that would impede Iran’s international trade and travel restrictions on individual members of the Revolutionary Guards.

History has shown that economic sanctions work best as a threat, and that they lose much of their punch the moment they are put into place. The U.S. has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran for three decades; the U.N. adopted sanctions in 2006 and the EU added its own sanctions in 2008 — all of which has given Iran a great deal of experience in coping with sanctions.

“Iran has gotten pretty good at diverting its investment strategies to places like Russia and China,” said Kristian Alexander, a regional specialist at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Universty.

Russia, frustrated by Iran’s decision to back out of a deal in which the Iranians were to have sent their stockpiles of low-enriched uranium to Russia in exchange for more highly enriched fuel, has signaled that it is now willing to support sanctions, but China continues to call for “more time and patience” in dealing with Iran.

Alexander, who recently traveled to Iran, said he doubted that any sanctions, however painful, would be enough to cause the current regime to change its behavior.