Drive for new Iran sanctions seen long and hard

By Louis Charbonneau - Analysis

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States and its Western allies are pushing for a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Iran but negotiations will drag on for months as Russia and China work hard to delay and water down any new measures.

U.S. and British officials said on Wednesday that six major powers had agreed to consider new sanctions against Iran after Tehran refused once again to freeze its nuclear activities, but Russia contradicted this, saying there was no firm agreement.

Analysts and diplomats from Security Council member states said the Western powers would most likely get a fourth sanctions resolution on Iran through the sharply divided U.N. Security Council. But it will not be an easy process.

With a U.S. election in November, if a new resolution goes through, there may be a new U.S. president in office when the council votes on it. Analysts also expect that it will most likely be a moderate toughening of previous penalties.

Iran's oil and gas industries remain off limits.

Ray Takeyh, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said negotiations will be long and protracted as veto-wielding council members Russia and China seek to balance their growing frustration with Iran with major commercial interests in the world's fourth biggest oil producer.

"I don't think it will be a significant ratcheting up of the sanctions," he said. "A few new names, new companies" on the U.N. blacklist.

Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, reiterated that Washington was ready to move quickly: "We have no plans to delay Security Council action."

Slow negotiations might be good news for those hoping for lower oil prices, which rose by $1 per barrel to $126 on Sunday after Grenell announced the new sanctions drive.

Some analysts and diplomats argue that slow negotiations and weak sanctions could send the wrong signal to Israel, which is widely believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal and thinks of a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat. It might decide diplomacy has failed and turn to military force.

'NO STOMACH FOR WAR'

Despite repeated U.S. and Israeli hints that air strikes could be used to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, doubts it will come to that.

"I don't think anyone really has the stomach for that," Boroujerdi said.

Tehran rejects Western allegations that it is developing atomic weapons and says its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity and refuses to halt the program. But Iran began its program to enrich uranium during its long war against Iraq in the 1980s, keeping it hidden until a group of dissident exiles revealed its existence in 2002.

George Perkovich, a non-proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, said the problem with moving slowly with further sanctions is that it gives Tehran more time to develop its nuclear technology.