Germany said Thursday that Iran should face additional economic penalties for refusing to halt activities that could support nuclear weapons development, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday (see GSN, Dec. 12).
Volker Stanzel, chief of staff to German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called for new measures targeting Iran's banking and transportation industries while speaking with his counterparts from France and the United Kingdom, according to a Der Spiegel report slated for publication today.
The Western powers would collaborate on the sanctions with the Obama administration in an attempt to give the next U.S. president a bargaining chip if he pursued dialogue with Iran, the German news magazine reported. The Western nations also planned to reach out to Russia and China, although the sanctions would not require the approval of the U.N. Security Council (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Dec. 13).
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates cautioned Iran and other antagonists against challenging President-elect Barack Obama when he enters office next month.
"Anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present opportunities to 'test' the new administration would be sorely mistaken. ... The president-elect and his team, myself included, will be ready to defend the interests of the United States, and our friends and allies, the moment he takes office on Jan. 20," said Gates, who agreed to remain in his position in the new administration.
Washington wants Iran to modify its behavior but is not looking to topple the government in Tehran, Gates said.
"Nobody is after a regime change in Iran," he said. "But one thing I think I can say with some confidence is that the president-elect ... is under no illusions about Iran's behavior and what Iran has been doing in the region and is doing in terms of its own weapons programs."
"We all need to work together to see if we can bring economic and diplomatic pressure to bring about a change in Iran's behavior," Gates added during a visit to Bahrain.
"If we say that we want to try to change Iranian behavior and want to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons and we want to avoid conflict, then the way to get them to change their behavior is to use every tool at our disposal to bring economic and political pressure on them," he said (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, Dec. 13).
Elsewhere, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's stated unwillingness to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received an indifferent response Saturday in Tehran.
"We do not care much, we have to see in practice. We do not consider this remark to have any political credibility," Ahmadinejad said (Agence France-Presse III/Zawya, Dec. 13).