On March 25, Iran announced it would limit inspections of its nuclear activities by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency to its legally binding requirements under the country's 1974 nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
The decision would affect the so-called subsidiary arrangements with the IAEA, an Iranian government spokesperson said on state television. These non-binding arrangements, voluntarily agreed to in 2002, meant Iran would inform the IAEA of any plans to build new nuclear-related facilities.
Under the legally binding safeguards agreement, Iran is required to inform the IAEA of the existence of a new nuclear facility 180 days before introducing nuclear material into it.
The previous day, the UN Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1747, imposing further limited economic sanctions on Iran in response to Tehran's refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment research program.
As part of a propaganda campaign for a future invasion of Iran, US officials have claimed that Iran's enrichment activities are a part of nuclear weapons program.
As a signatory to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is legally entitled to "develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination". This includes the production of low-enriched uranium (LEU) — uranium metal containing 3-5% of the fissile uranium-235 isotope — for nuclear power plant fuel.
Natural uranium ore has a U-235 content of about 0.7%. Nuclear bombs require uranium enriched to at least 90% or plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel rods.
The IAEA monitors the nuclear activities of NPT signatory countries that do not possess nuclear weapons to verify NPT compliance. IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei has repeatedly said that his inspectors have been unable to find any hard evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.
However last July, Washington, with the support of Britain and France, pressured the Security Council into approving Resolution 1896, calling on Iran to indefinitely suspend its uranium enrichment work as a "confidence building" measure.
When Iran refused, citing its right under the NPT to produce nuclear fuel for peaceful energy generation, Washington pressured the Security Council in December to impose restrictions on access to foreign funds for a number of Iranian individuals and organisations associated with the country's nuclear program.
Iran was given 90 days to agree to indefinitely suspend its enrichment program, which so far has only produced a few grams of LEU.
The new Security Council resolution bans Iranian arms exports (which are minuscule), and freezes financial assets abroad of 28 individuals and organisations, including those of the state-owned Bank Sepah and the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The IRGC was formed in the wake of Iran's 1979 anti-US, anti-monarchist revolution as a supposed "people's army". However, as its now-exiled co-founder Mohsen Sazegara noted in a March 16 New York Jewish Daily Forward opinion piece, since 1989 the IRGC has become a "business mafia" tied to the Islamic republic's top clerics, "being in charge of car manufacturing companies and assembly plants", as well as being "a major contractor in the construction of oil and gas pipelines".
Iran has been given 60 days to agree to halt its enrichment activities or face further UN sanctions.
The March 26 London Financial Times reported that during the Security Council negotiations on the new sanctions resolution, "Washington had to back away from some of its initial proposals, including a ban on all export credits and non-humanitarian financing for Iran", in order to get Russia and China, both of which have major commercial ties with Iran, to agree to vote for the resolution.
While Moscow and Beijing have stated they are opposed to sanctions being imposed on Iran without hard evidence it is violating the NPT, they also do not want to damage their commercial ties with the US and have therefore agreed to the imposition of limited, largely symbolic, sanctions.
While the US is China's largest export market, it only accounts for about 4% of Russia's exports. However, Russia is the largest supplier of fuel to US nuclear power plants. Under a 1993 disarmament treaty, this fuel is derived from 20,000 decommissioned Soviet-era nuclear warheads. Moscow wants to expand its sales of nuclear fuel to other countries, but needs Washington's agreement to do this.
Using the symbolic UN sanctions as leverage, Washington has orchestrated a largely unpublicised campaign to cut off Iran's access to the international financial system in the hope of crippling the country economically and thus weakening its future ability to resist an invasion.
The March 26 Washington Post reported that at least "40 major international banks and financial institutions have either cut off or cut back business with the Iranian government or private sector as a result of a quiet campaign launched by the Treasury and State departments last September, according to Treasury and State officials.
"The financial squeeze has seriously crimped Tehran's ability to finance petroleum industry projects and to pay for imports ...
The March 28 Christian Science Monitor reported that "war with Iran, or even targeted air strikes at presumed nuclear facilities, is looking less and less likely. Despite tough rhetoric from both sides and increased tension over Iran's move to detain 15 British sailors last week, a variety of influential thinkers who championed the US-led invasion of Iraq are now saying that containment, not confrontation, is the best approach to Iran" in the immediate period ahead.
As a result of Washington's failing war in Iraq, polls show that attacking Iran is highly unpopular among US voters. Moreover, the "logistics of a strike, with an expanded US military role in Iraq and the fact that the two US carrier groups in the Gulf can't stay there indefinitely, are growing ever more difficult", the Boston-based daily observed.
"If Bush attacked Iran tomorrow, the great majority of Americans would think he was nuts", Patrick Clawson, from Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the CSM, which added: "Clawson, a vigorous proponent of invading Iraq, sees the Islamic Republic of Iran as an intractable enemy of the US, and has repeatedly urged that the US focus on regime change there... But he has recently written that military action against Iran 'is clearly undesirable' and thinks war is out of the question" in the current political circumstances.