News

Yang Jiechi, Foreign Minister of China, a veto-wielding member, spelt out clearly his country's opposition to fresh sanctions in early February. Later in March, at a press conference, he said pressure and sanctions are not the fundamental way forward to resolving the Iran nuclear issue.

Encouraged by China's firm resistance to “crippling sanctions,” and the resonance this view has found among regional heavyweights, including Brazil, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Iran is reasserting its long-held view that the era of western dominance, led by the United States, is entering its terminal phase. After sending mixed signals for some time on Iran, India has also firmly spelt out its opposition to fresh sanctions. Speaking on March 15 in Washington at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said: “It continues to be our view that sanctions that target Iranian people and cause difficulties to the ordinary man, woman and child would not be conducive to a resolution of this [Iran] question.”

Iran has taken three major steps in recent weeks to show doubters within its own establishment and in the rest of the world that the Americans and some of their key allies, caught in the quagmire of global recession and still feeling their way for an honourable exit from Iraq and Afghanistan, are beginning to morph unambiguously into full-blown paper tigers.

The Iranian establishment has also arrived at the conclusion that within the framework of a glob... >>>