Amsterdam, Netherlands - The deadline set for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment by the UN Security Council has passed. But sanctions are not only unlikely, they're illogical.
China and Russia have repeatedly said they don't believe sanctions could solve the problem, partly because Iran has developed strong economic ties with them on mostly oil and natural gas contracts. They are not going to endanger their crucial interests and tremendous investments.
Last year a Chinese state-run company, signed a 25-year contract to import 110 million metric tons of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from Iran. This was followed by another contract between Sinopec and Iran, signed in October of the same year. The deal worth $100 billion, adds an extra 250 million tons of LNG to China's energy supply, extracted from Iran's Yadavaran field over a 25-year period.
In 2001, Iran-China trade volume stood at $3.3 Billion, and in 2005, the volume of Iran-China trade hit $US 9.2 billion. China currently holds the second rank among top exporters to Iran (2005) with 8.3% of the total market, after top ranked Germany. Iran's imports from China rose by 360% between 2000 and 2005.
The government of Iran, in its entirety, sees its "peaceful" nuclear program as a matter of national identity now, a sign of Independence and sovereignty, which has been one of the most important themes of the revolution in 1979 .
Stopping enrichment is the ultimate goal of the entire negotiation process. By complying, Iran would lose its game before it even started. If the 5+1 countries would like to convince Iran to give up on such a crucial issue, they have to offer more than some economic promises.
This, in my opinion, could only be a solid guarantee by the U.S. that it would abandon its policies to topple the Islamic Republic either by military force or internal unrest with ultimately a non-violent revolution fueled by various American foundations -- another velvet revolution.
Such a guarantee will be good news for the organic pro-democracy activists, if backed up by meaningful signs such as dismantling the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) and stopping funding quasi-human-rights advocacy groups such as IDHCR which pursue regime change under cover of documenting violations of human rights, as was reported earlier this year by Washington Post's Karl Vick and David Finkel from Tehran.
U.S. regime change policies have been damaging the moderates and pro-democracy movement by enabling the Islamic Republic to paint them as instruments of America seeking to destabilize and topple the regime. Iran wont stop until this does.
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