DC to Lula: "Nice try, but too late"

DC to Lula: "Nice try, but too late"

It didn't take too long for Washington to put Lula firmly in his place.

Brazil's President thought he had scored a diplomatic coup last weekend, by persuading Iran to ship 12 tonnes of partially-enriched uranium out of the country.

In many ways he had. Washington, after all, had failed to achieve the same goal last October.

But Lula had barely 24 hours to savour the success before Hillary Clinton took all the wind out of his sails. With a rhetorical pat on the head for him and his Turkish allies, Clinton dismissed the whole process as meaningless, and announced that Iran will face more sanctions.

There are a number of unanswered questions regarding the announcement coming from Tehran, and although we acknowledge the sincere efforts of both Turkey and Brazil to find a solution regarding Iran’s standoff with the international community over its nuclear program, the P-5+1, [...] are proceeding to rally the international community on behalf of a strong sanctions resolution that will, in our view, send an unmistakable message about what is expected from Iran.

But what exactly is expected from Iran? Many had believed that Brazil/Turkey deal fulfilled all the conditions Washington had demanded last October in the so-called TRR (Tehran Research Reactor) talks.

Not according to Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN, who said on Tuesday:

We need to be clear; the TRR proposal had nothing do with Iran’s sanctioned activities to date, and its nuclear obligations.

By “nuclear obligations”, Rice meant P5+1 demands that Iran give up enriching uranium, (which it is allowed to do under the terms of international agreements.)

The whole whiplash event came as a surprise to a number of observers, including the National Iranian American Council:

 Linking the TRR deal to suspension of enrichment is a new component – it was the White House itself that decided last year to go forward with a deal to swap Iran's LEU for fuel rods without a suspension in order to throw back Iran's break out capability.

Equally confusing is the fact that Washington’s arguments for another round of sanctions against Iran have been based almost exclusively on the claim that Iran had rejected the TRR agreement.

But most bizarre of all was Rice’s contention that the crushing of Lula’s diplomatic achievement, and the rush to more sanctions, constituted “making manifest and real the dual track approach”, and that “the door remains open”.

As representatives from the UK, Russia and China followed Rice up to the UN microphone on Thursday, to read almost verbatim from the same script, a couple of journalists tried to point out the contradiction: with Brazil having coaxed Iran into some fairly major bargaining concessions, didn’t Washington’s sanctions bombshell actually constitute a slamming of the diplomatic door?

No-one seemed to hear the question.