UNITED NATIONS, June 9 -- A divided U.N. Security Council on Wednesday imposed a fourth round of financial and commercial sanctions on Iran's military establishment, bringing to a close more than six months of diplomatic efforts by the Obama administration to penalize Tehran for building a covert nuclear facility and accelerating its enrichment of uranium.
The 15-member council adopted its fourth sanctions resolution on Iran in four years by a vote of 12-2. Brazil and Turkey voted against the resolution, citing concerns that the council had not exhausted diplomatic efforts to resolve its standoff with Iran. Lebanon abstained.
The Obama administration succeeded in securing support for sanctions from the council's major powers, including China and Russia, by ensuring that the measure would not impair their ability to trade with Iran. But the four-year-long campaign faced new challenges from regional powerhouses Brazil and Turkey, which have used the Iran crisis to assert their role on the diplomatic stage.
The 10-page resolution would modestly reinforce a range of economic, high-technology and military sanctions against Iran and target the head of the of Iranian atomic energy agency, Javad Rahiqi, and 40 entities linked to the nation's military elite, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with a travel ban and an asset freeze. Iran has repeatedly rebuffed calls to halt its uranium-enrichment program; Iranian leaders say their efforts are entirely peaceful, but the United States and others say Iran is set on building a bomb.
The resolution falls short of the "crippling sanctions" U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged to impose on Iran a year ago. But U.S. officials hailed today's vote as a show of international resolve in the face of Iran's continued defiance of Security Council resolutions demanding it suspend its uranium-enrichment program and fully cooperate.
"These are tough, strong and comprehensive sanctions that will be the most significant of all of the resolutions that imposed sanctions on Iran," Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview before the vote. "The fact that the Iranians have exerted so much effort and spent so much money to block this from coming into effect is one of several indications that they really don't want these sanctions adopted and enacted. I think they share our views, quite frankly, that these are a significant and serious set of new sanctions."
