"In a setback for the United States, Iran won a two-month reprieve from new UN sanctions over its nuclear program on Friday. The Bush administration and its European allies ceded to Russian and Chinese demands to give Tehran more time to address international concerns", Associated Press reported on September 29.
Washington alleges that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program, despite Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitors Iran's nuclear program, repeatedly reporting that his inspectors have found no evidence to support this claim.
On August 27, Tehran and the IAEA secretariat reached an agreement on a timetable to clear up a series of minor outstanding issues on Iran's past nuclear activities before the end of the year.
Washington, backed by Paris, London and Berlin, had used these issues to push the UN Security Council to impose two rounds of limited financial sanctions against Iran in December and March, demanding that Tehran halt research into uranium enrichment.
Iran has refused to do so, pointing out that this demand contravenes its right under the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty and its 1974 IAEA safeguards agreement to enrich uranium to fuel electricity generation.
Following talks in New York between the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — plus Germany, Washington and its EU allies agreed to delay pursuit of a new sanctions resolution until November.
"The decision", AP noted, "marks another blow for Washington in its diplomatic struggle to toughen existing UN sanctions on Iran, whose leader this week declared to the UN General Assembly that the nuclear issue was 'closed' and vowed to defy attempts to add new penalties ...
"The Bush administration had hoped to capitalize on growing international frustration with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hardline stance in refusing to halt uranium enrichment and reprocessing that he insists are purely for peaceful civilian energy use ...
"A joint statement from the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany said they would finalize the new resolution and bring it to a vote unless reports in November from the UN's nuclear watchdog and the EU foreign policy chief 'show a positive outcome of their efforts'."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking to reporters in New York, denied that the agreement was a "cave-in" by Washington to Moscow and Beijing. She also told reporters that Washington and its EU allies would pursue their own economic sanctions against Iran.
"However, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner signaled Europe wasn't ready to move on multilateral sanctions quickly", AP reported, adding: "The French, British and Germans will meet with the full EU on Oct. 15 to discuss sanctions, but will wait until the Security Council decides before imposing their own measures, he said."
While the US has no shared economic interests with Iran due to long-standing unilateral US sanctions, France has strong economic ties with Iran. Several large French companies have projects in Iran, including Renault, which this year started production of its Logan model there, at an expected rate of 300,000 cars a year. The French-owned Total, Europe's third-largest oil company, has a 30% stake in a liquefied natural gas venture in Iran. French banks in 2005 accounted for US$5.9 billion of the $25.4 billion in foreign loans made to Iran.