* U.S. steps up sanctions as Iran floats nuclear talks
HONOLULU/TEHRAN (Reuters) – President Barack Obama signed new sanctions against Iran into law on Saturday, shortly after Iran signaled it was ready for fresh talks with the West on its nuclear programme and said it had delayed long-range missile tests in the Gulf.
Tensions between Iran and the West have grown since EU leaders said they wanted to set tougher sanctions against Tehran by the end of next month in a bid to force it to curb a research programme that they suspect is developing nuclear weapons.
In the absence of a fresh mandate from the U.N. Security Council, which has already imposed four rounds of global sanctions, Washington has also stepped up the pressure with sanctions on financial institutions that deal with Iran’s central bank.
The defense funding bill, approved by Congress last week, aims to reduce the oil revenues that make up the bulk of Iran’s export earnings. Obama signed it in Hawaii, where he was spending the Christmas holiday.
If enforced strictly, the sanctions could make it nearly impossible for most refiners to buy crude from Iran, the world’s fourth biggest producer.
However, Obama asked for scope to apply the measures flexibly, and will have discretion to waive penalties. Senior U.S. officials said Washington was consulting foreign partners to ensure the new measures did not harm global energy markets.
Iran responded to the growing pressure by warning this week that it could shut the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions were imposed on its oil exports. It launched 10 days of naval wargames in the Gulf as a show of strength, further rattling oil markets and pushing up the price of crude.
In the past, Iran has threatened to close the waterway only if attacked by the United States and Israel.
The U.S. Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, said it would not allow shipping to be disrupted in a waterway through which 40 percent of the world’s oil passes.
Analysts say that Iran is playing for time and that its increasingly strident rhetoric shows its clerical leadership is concerned about even harsher penalties.
MISSILES
Against this backdrop, Iran’s state media reported early on Saturday that long-range missiles had been launched during the naval exercises.
But Deputy Navy Commander Mahmoud Mousavi later went on the English language Press TV channel to deny they had in fact been fired: “The exercise of launching missiles will be carried out in the coming days.”
Separately, Iranian media reported that nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili would write to the EU foreign policy chief to say Iran was ready for fresh talks on its nuclear programme, which it says is aimed exclusively at power generation.
“Jalili will soon send a letter to Catherine Ashton over the format of negotiations … then fresh talks will take place with major powers,” the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to Germany, Alireza Sheikh Attar, as saying.
Negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France – plus Germany (P5+1) stalled in January.
Ashton, leading the European negotiators, wrote to Jalili in October and has not yet had a reply, her spokesman Michael Mann said. But the bloc was open to meaningful talks with Tehran:
“We continue to pursue our twin-track approach and are open for meaningful discussions on confidence-building measures, without preconditions from the Iranian side.”
A U.S. administration official added: “We have indicated for years that we are willing to engage in talks with Iran, provided it is ready to engage in a meaningful and constructive fashion.” Senior officials said the sanctions did not alter this policy.
Iranian analyst Hamid Farahvashian said Tehran was seeking to send a message to the West that it should think twice about the economic cost of putting pressure on Iran.
“The Iranians have always used this method of carrot and stick … first they used the stick of closing Hormuz and now the carrot is their willingness for talks,” said Farahvashian.
UNDER PRESSURE
Talks between Iran and the P5+1 have been stalled for a year and Malcolm Chalmers, Research Director at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, said Europe would be sceptical about the offer.
The * U.S. steps up sanctions as Iran floats nuclear talks by Dinar Daddy's Tidbits, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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