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  US charm offensive aims to persuade Israel not to attack Iran over nuclear weapons development |
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 | Reported by guardian.co.uk
on Saturday, 10 October 2009
(on October 10, 2009) |
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US charm offensive aims to persuade Israel not to attack Iran over nuclear weapons developmentAmid increasing fears of an Israeli strike against Iran, America will this week press Russia to support a threat of tougher sanctions against Tehran in an attempt to avert possible military action.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, on Tuesday with worries about Iran's nuclear ambitions at the top of the agenda.Clinton, who began a five-day European trip yesterday, is expected to push Russia to support a move for stronger sanctions in the wake of recent revelations about a secret uranium enrichment site near the Iranian city of Qom.
Washington wants Russia to back the sanctions if Iran does not agree to halt its enrichment activities.American officials also believe that tough sanctions supported by Iran's traditional allies, China and Russia, could go some way to mollifying Israeli hawks who have been making increasingly militant noises about Iran's nuclear ambitions.But there is no guarantee that Clinton's diplomatic push will actually get Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment programme by the end of the year, as Washington has demanded.
Russia has been a hard sell in putting sanctions in place against Iran, and officials are sceptical that Moscow will fully support the latest moves.
There are fears that Iran's agreement to let UN inspectors into the Qom site, and its reopening of talks between Iran's chief nuclear negotiator and diplomats from the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany may have persuaded the Russians thatno further steps were needed.In the face of Iran's apparent determination to secretly develop its nuclear facilities, Russia has recently struck a harder tone, although it has still not explicitly backed new sanctions.
Last week, in a pre-recorded television interview, Medvedev said that Russia did not want to see any more nations develop nuclear weapons."The expansion of the 'nuclear club' is very much not in our interests," he said.
However, he failed to address the sanctions issue directly.One factor aiding Clinton might be Russia's reaction to Barack Obama's decision to abandon plans left over from the George W Bush era to base a missile defence system in eastern Europe.
The plans were intensely disliked by Moscow.
Although scrapping them brought criticism from some European nations and US conservatives, the move was welcomed in Moscow and could signal a thaw in relations and perhaps ease co-operation on thorny issues such as Iran.
Other matters for Clinton and Medvedev to discuss will include arms control and the worsening situation in Afghanistan and North Korea.Last week, tensions over Iran rose further after Israeli deputy defence secretary Ephraim Sneh said Israel could attack Iran by Christmas if further sanctions were not introduced.
The comments were the latest in a series of statements by Sneh that have struck an increasingly militant tone.
In mid-September, he told the Dow Jones newswire: "If they, by weakness and by stupidity, allow the bomb, we have no choice.
We can't allow them to continue.
It's urgent."Now Sneh's most recent comments have seen Iran complain last week to the United Nation's general secretary Ban Ki Moon.
Mohammed Khazaee, Iran's ambassador to the UN, wrote to Moon, saying that such words were "irresponsible" in international diplomacy.
"There is no explanation for Israel's continuing threats against Tehran," he wrote.However, some Iranian officials have responded in kind.
At the end of last week, a senior Iranian commander in the Revolutionary Guard threatened an instant and devastating response to any Israeli attack.
Mojtaba Zolnour, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative in the Guard, said it would attack Israel with missiles if a US or Israeli missile landed in Iran.
"Should a single American or Zionist missile land in our country, before the dust settles, Iranian missiles will blow up the heart of Israel," Zolnour told the state IRNA news agency.
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