The Group of Eight industrialized nations next week plans to consider Iran's post-election turmoil and the possibility of imposing new economic penalties on the Middle Eastern state, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said yesterday (see GSN, June 29).
Leaders from the G-8 countries are expected to meet at a summit from July 8-10 in L'Aquila, Italy.
"Iran will be the first topic that we will deal with," said Berlusconi, the acting G-8 chairman, according to Agence France-Presse. "According to the telephone conversations I have had with other leaders, I think that we will go in the direction [of] sanctions" (Agence France-Presse I/Zawya, June 29).
G-8 nations could prohibit travel by specific Iranian officials, seek to cut off Iran's gasoline imports or press European oil firms to stop doing business with Iran, Reuters reported.
"For the moment, we are still seeing what we have seen before -- leaders holding back, trying to see what is happening, trying to make sure they are not seen as meddling in the system and not making matters worse for the protesters," said Clara O'Donnell of the Center for European Reform.
Russia, a G-8 member state, and China are likely to block any efforts by the group to tighten trade sanctions on Iran, analysts warned.
To date, neither United States nor the European Union has publicly discussed imposing sanctions following the disputed re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Reuters (Francesca Piscioneri, Reuters, June 29). Iran's Guardian Council has confirmed the result of the June 12 vote, AFP reported (Jay Deshmukh, Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, June 30).
The United States, European Union and U.N. Security Council have already imposed various economic penalties against Iran for its refusal to halt activities that could support nuclear weapons development. Tehran has maintained that its nuclear program is strictly peaceful.
"For the West, the main issue is not the election, it is not the post-election violence -- although it has condemned it. The main issue for the West is the nuclear issue," Sadeq Saba, an analyst with BBC Persian television, told AFP. "If it had been a 'normal' election, the West would have put pressure on Iran to restart nuclear negotiations. So the crisis-making in Iran is a ploy to delay that pressure coming from the West."
"The contacts [between Iran and European powers] will probably stall over the next few weeks until they see how things lie internally within Iran," said Claire Spencer, an expert with Chatham House. "Over the short term, we may see a hardening of the line taken on the nuclear issue," she said.
Movement toward new nuclear negotiations might pick up around September, when leaders from around the world are expected to convene at the U.N. General Assembly, said Elahe Mohtasham, a senior research associate with the London-based Foreign Policy Center.
Resuming talks would serve both Iran and Western powers, Mohtasham added: "Iran is not North Korea, it doesn't want to be isolated further. Iran needs the West and the West needs Iran" (Agence France-Presse III/Spacewar.com, June 29).