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R E G I O N: US warns Europe with latest Iran sanctions

* The sanctions send a message to the Europeans that if they do not support the US stance, they heighten the risk of the United States taking military action

WASHINGTON: Washington’s latest sanctions on Iran up the pressure on America’s European allies to follow suit and tighten the screws on the Islamic state or see it attacked, analysts say.

“The principal intention of the announcement was to send a signal as much to the Europeans, the Chinese and the Russians, as well as to the Iranians,” said Karim Sadjapour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think-tank.

US efforts to get tougher on Iran are frustrated by China and Russia’s reluctance. But Sadjapour said the new sanctions sent a message to the Europeans that if they do not support the US stance, they heighten the risk of the United States taking military action. “China and Russia are more concerned about the prospect of the US bombing Iran than of Iran getting a nuclear bomb,” he added.

Iran is accused of enriching uranium in order to make fuel for a nuclear bomb. It insists its uranium activities are aimed solely at generating power for civilian purposes. The fresh sanctions announced by Washington on Thursday target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, accused of spreading weapons of mass destruction, and its elite Quds Force, which was designated as a supporter of terrorism.

The United States also stepped up efforts to squeeze Iran out of global banking, blacklisting three Iranian state-owned banks, along with companies controlled by the guards, and the logistics arm of Iran’s defence ministry. The six major powers involved in talks about Iran’s nuclear programme will meet in Europe in early November to discuss strengthened UN sanctions against Tehran, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack announced Friday.

As well as the United States, these powers include Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. The European Union is meanwhile mulling its own possible sanctions, called for by France with British support. But Germany and Italy - key trading partners of Iran - are reluctant to back them. The EU measures would step up pressure on Tehran without having to overcome the unwillingness of China and Russia, heavyweight diplomatic players and also major trading partners with Iran, to back a third UN sanctions resolution.

“We talk to them (the Europeans). I wouldn’t put it in the vein of pressuring them,” McCormack said Friday. “We have talked to them about how working either together or in a complementary fashion, we might increase the pressure on the Iranian government to come to the table,” he added.

“Certainly, that could have a very powerful effect.” Before the sanctions were announced, another expert said the United States needed the EU to apply more sanctions. “The United States has not significantly traded with or invested in Iran for nearly 30 years,” said Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution, a research institute in Washington.

“It is only by persuading other major countries not to do so that it stands any chance of convincing Iran that the economic and diplomatic costs of developing nuclear weapons are greater than the perceived benefits.” “The Europeans have already taken significant steps in this direction, but there is much more they could do,” for example canceling credit bonds, which were worth 18 billion dollars in 2005, he added.

“There is of course no guarantee that escalating political and economic sanctions will succeed in changing Iranian behaviour or contribute to a change in the Iranian regime,” Gordon said. “But given the alternatives - acquiescing to Iranian nuclear capabilities or a military strike that could prove costly and counterproductive - it makes sense to find out.” afp

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