Secretary Clinton Seeks Middle East Partners for Iran Sanctions

Morgan Lorraine Roach / February 18, 2010

In his inaugural address, President Obama vowed to reach out and engage with the international community including those nations hostile to the United States.  However, it is clear that Obama’s engagement with Iran has been nothing short of a failure.  In her recent remarks with the Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal, Secretary Clinton admitted that Iran “has failed to reciprocate.”  Instead, Iran announced that it will increase its enrichment capacity and produce twenty percent uranium.  The Obama administration is now preparing to move ahead on the sanctions front in its dual-tracked approach: engagement combined with multilateral pressure.  While Secretary Clinton visited Qatar and Saudi Arabia this past weekend, her deputy secretaries are traveling around the region in hopes of enlisting countries to put pressure on Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. James Steinberg will be traveling to Israel the week of February 21st; Jacob Lew headed this past weekend to Egypt, Israel and Jordan.  The State Department’s Under Secretary for political affairs, William Burns is also traveling to Syria and Lebanon, hoping to loosen the links between Damascus and Tehran.  Considering Syria is Iran’s closest ally in the region and Lebanon is expected to oppose sanctions against Iran, the hopes of achieving any sort of “crippling sanctions” against Iran’s nuclear ambitions are dim. (more…)