EU moves closer to imposing tough sanctions on Iran

NYTimes.com — The European Union moved closer to imposing a phased oil embargo on Iran and some form of narrow sanctions against transactions with Iran’s central bank, European and French diplomats said on Friday.

Officials hope to announce a final plan at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

But senior French officials are concerned that these measures, even in combination with sanctions on financial transactions with Iran announced by Washington, will not be strong enough to push the Iranian government into serious, substantive negotiations on its nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at producing weapons.

French officials say that the effort to increase pressure on Tehran is a crucial element in a “dual track” strategy — inflicting pain through sanctions in order to prompt substantive negotiations to halt Iran’s enrichment of uranium, as the United Nations Security Council has demanded. But even accelerated sanctions are hard to put into effect and slow to work, while Iran is changing the game by moving more of its enrichment centrifuges into deep tunnels inside mountains, where they will be much harder to attack militarily.

France is eager to avoid military action against Iran. French officials do not doubt that Israel will do all it can to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but they consider that an Israeli attack on Tehran would be counterproductive, only delaying the Iranian program and strengthening a weakened Islamic leadership.

“We must do everything possible to avoid an Israeli attack on Iran,” said a senior French official, “even if it means a rise in the price of oil and gasoline.” If the sanctions on Iran “are massive, they can have a big impact, with high unemployment and a fall in the rial,” Iran’s currency. In fact, the rial has hit historic lows against the dollar this week.

But with Iran moving its centrifuges deep underground, the official said, “this changes the landscape.”

“This time it really is a race. It’s why we are pushing so hard. We want to act fast.” Still, the official said, France recognizes that the possibility of military action represents another form of pressure on Iran to negotiate.

In his annual speech on French diplomacy on Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran of lying, and he denounced what he called its “senseless race for a nuclear bomb.” He called for “much stronger, much more decisive” sanctions, saying that “time is running out” and “everything must be done to avoid” international military intervention.

Iran says that it is enriching uranium solely for peaceful uses and denies a military intent. But few in the West believe Tehran, which has not cooperated fully with inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and has been pursuing some technologies that have only a military use.

As existing sanctions bite, Tehran is talking both tough and soft, promising to shut the Strait of Hormuz in the case of an oil embargo and at the same time saying that it is ready to resume negotiations with the six-nation group, led by the European Union, which includes the five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China — plus Germany.

Russia and Turkey are already heralding Tehran’s willingness to return to the table. On Thursday, alongside the Iranian foreign minister in Istanbul, Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that Iran was ready for talks. “The sides have confirmed their willingness,” he said. “Today is the day for negotiations and a solution.”

But French officials say that Tehran has not responded to an October letter from the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, offering a resumption of talks, so long as there are no preconditions and Iran is willing to discuss the main issue, which is its nuclear enrichment program.

During the last talks a year ago, Iran refused to discuss its nuclear program and said that before any negotiations, the Security Council must first lift all sanctions already in place and recognize Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iran also said it was no longer interested in swapping a large part of its enriched uranium in return for fuel rods for a research medical reactor in Tehran.

The six-nation group rejects Iran’s position, saying that the treaty contains no such “right” to anything except peaceful nuclear energy, that sanctions will not be removed as a condition for talks and that there is no point in talks unless they are about Iran’s nuclear program and its compliance with United Nations resolutions to freeze enrichment.

The importance of the European Union sanctions, which are still being negotiated, is both economic and political. The European Union buys about 18 percent of Iran’s oil exports, which are its main source of income.

France, Britain and Germany want the sanctions to come into effect within three months, while other countries more dependent on Iranian oil, like Greece, want a longer delay of up to eight months, European officials said. The question is when to phase out existing contracts, and how to replace Iranian oil with that from other countries, like Saudi Arabia, and whether to try to compensate countries that may need to pay more for replacement oil. If the delay is too long, some suggest, Iran will more easily find alternative customers.

The Europeans have agreed in general on sanctions on financial transactions with the Iranian Central Bank, which the United States has already imposed, but are discussing the scope, perhaps narrowing them to transactions supporting proliferation.

But Russia and China have made it clear to other partners that they will not accept any new round of Security Council sanctions on Iran. So further pressure must come from outside the United Nations, from countries willing to act, the French say.

The United States is also considered to be more willing than France to offer Tehran certain concessions in return for substantive talks, but nothing that would violate the Security Council resolutions, the officials said.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that sanctions would continue until Iran showed a commitment to meaningful talks. “We all are seeking clarity about the meaning behind Iran’s public statements that they are willing to engage,” Mrs. Clinton said. “But we have to see a seriousness and a sincerity of purpose coming from them.”

A senior French official said: “We have to hold together, as the representatives of the world through the U.N. Security Council. And we have to be clear about what we are offering.”

Getting clear answers out of Tehran is another matter, the official said. “The inter-mullah process is much more complicated than even the inter-agency process” in the United States, he said.

“I’m convinced that if we fail,” the official said, “if the diplomatic process ends, then we’ll have terrible consequences — either military action versus Iranian sites or a collapse of the nonproliferation regime.”

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.