US Senators Threaten New Sanctions Against Iran

Officials Downplay Last Week's Talks

by Jason Ditz, October 06, 2009

Though there appeared to be little call for their skepticism, the Obama Administration’s top officials continued to reject the idea that last week’s Geneva talks had been anything but a very limited success.

The Senate Banking Committee acted as though the meeting hadn’t even occurred at all, saying that the Congress wanted to move against Iran with crippling sanctions and that they could not be persuaded to wait long on the matter.

Yet the Iranian government managed to obtain what appeared to be a broad-based agreement on its nuclear program, that it would send its uranium to Russia for further enrichment, even President Obama approved, though he didn’t appear too happy with having to concede again that Iran has every right to a civilian nuclear program. Today officials were still demanding that Iran abandon the program, however.

Iran even finalized their date for inspections with the IAEA, seemingly ending the last excuse for US threats, though ultimately not the threats themselves. Defense Secretary Robert Gates again insisted today that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he remains convinced that Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons and only the US can stop them.

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