I'm guessing this is just the beginning of it and I'm also thinking that nothing will actually happen until the US elects a new President but at least this time it will have UN backing. So this time round we'll all be invited to go, just wondering what will happen to efforts (should they be ongoing) in Afghanistan and Iraq.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11724558/
MSNBC.com
Official says Moscow opposes Iran sanctions
Statement comes as momentum builds to refer Tehran to Security Council
BREAKING NEWS
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 12:49 p.m. ET March 8, 2006
UNITED NATIONS - Russia’s foreign minister suggested Wednesday that Moscow would oppose sanctions on Iran because such measures rarely achieve their intended goals.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters that the International Atomic Energy Agency must stay in the lead on Iran and be allowed to keep working inside the country. It was a clear indication that Russia does not want the U.N. Security Council heavily involved in the Iran issue.
Asked if Russia would consider approving sanctions against Iran, Lavrov said: “I don’t think sanctions as a means to solve a crisis have ever achieved a goal in the recent history, so ... we must rely on the professional advice of the IAEA, the watchdog of the nonproliferation regime.”
The United States, France and Britain have pushed for the Security Council to take a tough line on Iran, starting with a series of small steps that could lead to sanctions. But any such measures would have to get by Russia and China, which also have veto power in the council.
'No military solution'
Lavrov, who had met with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan just moments before, also ruled out military action against Iran, saying Russia was “convinced that there is no military solution to this crisis.”
Lavrov’s comments hours after Iran threatened the United States with “harm and pain” for its role in hauling Tehran before the Security Council.
“The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wishes to choose that path, let the ball roll,” it said in a statement obtained by Reuters on the sidelines of a U.N. nuclear watchdog board meeting in Vienna.
But the United States and its European allies said Iran’s nuclear intransigence left the world no choice but to ask for Security Council action. The council could impose economic and political sanctions on Iran.
The statements were delivered to the 35-member board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is meeting in Vienna to focus on Tehran’s refusal to freeze uranium enrichment.
At the United Nations, Lavrov responded to questions about whether the Security Council should raise the possibility of sanctions after the IAEA board sends the 15-nation U.N. body its latest report on Iran by saying the situation reminded him of the council’s consideration of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led 2003 invasion.
“It looks so deja vu, you know,” he said. “... I don’t believe we should engage in something which might become self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The United States and Britain led the invasion of Iraq without Security Council authorization after arguing that Baghdad was concealing weapons of mass destruction, but no nuclear, biological or chemical arms were later found.
Russia has been at the forefront of the Iranian nuclear talks over the past few months with a proposal to host Iran’s uranium enrichment program. The United States and the European Union back the idea, but Iran has demanded the right to conduct small-scale uranium enrichment at home.
U.S.: Statements further isolate Iran
The White House dismissed the rhetoric out of Tehran on Wednesday.
“I think that provocative statements and actions only further isolate Iran from the rest of the world,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush to hurricane-affected states in the Gulf Coast. “And the international community has spelled out to Iran what it needs to do.”
America’s ambassador to the United Nations — and the chief architect of U.S. policy in the Security Council once it takes up the Iran issue — said Iran’s comments reflected the menace it poses.
“Their threats show why leaving a country like that with a nuclear weapon is so dangerous,” John Bolton told the Associated Press in a phone call from Washington.
He classified the Iranian comments as “reflecting their determination to acquire weapons.”
On Tuesday, Vice President **** Cheney warned Tehran that Iran would face consequences if it persisted in defying the international community.
Iran has accused Washington of helping to engineer an IAEA board vote a month ago to report Tehran’s atomic project to the Security Council.
An Iranian collision course with the council looked more likely after Tehran brushed aside what EU diplomats said was a Russian offer to let it do some atomic research if it refrained from enriching uranium on an industrial scale for 7-9 years.
The United States and its key European Union allies— Britain, France and Germany — also rebuffed the idea because they said it would not have prevented Iran perfecting bomb technology via enrichment research.
Iran denies Western suspicions it is secretly trying to build atomic bombs, saying it seeks only nuclear-generated electricity.
'Oil weapon' worries
Tehran also said Wednesday it would have to review its oil export policy if world pressure mounted over its disputed atomic work.
Asked whether Iran would use an “oil weapon” as the world’s fourth largest crude oil exporter, Javad Vaeedi, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Reuters: “We will not (do so now), but if the situation changes, we will have to review our oil policies.”
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, had said on Sunday that Tehran was not keen to use oil as a weapon in its escalating row with the West “but if conditions change it could affect our decision.”
He did not specify what he meant by a change in conditions.
Iran is the fourth biggest oil exporter in the world and the second largest in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. There is broad international concern that isolating Iran could drive up already high oil prices.
The IAEA meeting is in effect the last step before the Security Council begins to consider Iran’s nuclear plans, which could lead to possible sanctions. Iran’s president said earlier Wednesday that his country will not back down from plans to enrich uranium domestically.
France, Germany and Britain, which spearheaded the Feb. 4 IAEA resolution clearing the path for Security Council action, warned that what is known about Iran’s enrichment program could represent only “the tip of the iceberg.”
“We believe that the time has ... come for the U.N. Security Council to reinforce the authority” of the IAEA and its board, said a draft statement by the three European countries.
Austria, which holds the EU presidency, expressed regret at Iran’s decisions to withhold “voluntary cooperation” from IAEA inspectors and resume uranium enrichment, which can be part of a process to make nuclear weapons.
The Austrian comments were made in a statement prepared for delivery on behalf of the European Union and nearly a dozen nonmember European nations.
Iranian president defiant
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remained defiant: “Our nation has made its decision to fully use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and all have to give in to this decision made by the Iranian nation,” he said in Iran. “We have made our choice.”
His comments — and U.S. and Russian statements the day before rejecting any compromise that would allow Tehran to enrich uranium domestically — set the stage for Security Council action once the IAEA board meeting hears a report on the latest investigations into Iran’s nuclear program and debates the issue.
A senior Western diplomat familiar with the Security Council negotiations said Tuesday that permanent council members Britain and France already were preparing a statement “urging” Iran to re-impose a freeze on all enrichment.
The diplomat, who requested anonymity in exchange for discussing strategy on Iran, said the statement also would call on Iran to fully cooperate with IAEA inspectors trying to establish whether the country had ever tried to make such weapons — all requests made earlier by the board.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
It's gonna be a war and we're all invited 
