BRUSSELS, July 26, (Agencies): The European Union and Canada hammered Iran on Monday with fresh sanctions against its energy sector as the West cranked up pressure on Tehran to resume talks on its disputed nuclear programme.
European foreign ministers formally adopted new punitive measures, going beyond a fourth set of UN sanctions imposed over Tehran’s refusal to freeze nuclear work, echoed by Canada within hours.
The moves are aimed at reviving moribund talks between Iran and six world powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US.
“We want to see dialogue on nuclear weapons capability to start as soon as possible in order to reach an agreement,” EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said.
“Until we get to that point we will continue to take our responsibilities seriously... (The) purpose of those sanctions is to persuade Iran, ‘we need to discuss this issue, and move forward’.”
However, Iran responded by saying the sanctions would fail and only serve to complicate its showdown with the West.
“Sanctions are not considered an effective tool... and they will only complicate the situation” was the reaction from foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, quoted by the state news agency IRNA.
Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi said the punitive measures would not affect the country’s oil production.
“European oil companies had no presence (in Iran’s energy sector) and so they cannot have any impact on us,” Mirkazemi told IRNA.
The EU measures include a ban on the sale of equipment, technology and services to Iran’s energy sector, hitting activities in refining, liquefied natural gas, exploration and production, diplomats said.
The sanctions also prohibit new investments in the energy sector.
The Iranian banking sector was also hit by restrictions forcing any transactions over 40,000 euros (around 52,000 dollars) to be authorised by EU governments before they can go ahead.
The identities of those hit by the new measures will be available when sanctions are published in the official EU journal, but diplomats said 41 people and 22 government entities were concerned.
Canada’s sanctions also take aim at Iran’s energy and banking sectors, as well as chemical, biological and nuclear activities, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said.
Like the EU and the United States, Canada will bar all new investment in Iran’s energy industry, particularly crude oil refining and liquefied natural gas.
Ashton has exchanged letters with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in recent weeks in a bid to revive talks, and Tehran has indicated that the talks could resume in September.
The last high-level meeting between Iran and the six world powers was held in Geneva in October 2009 when the two sides agreed a nuclear fuel swap that has since stalled.
Western powers have demanded that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment programme, fearing that Tehran would use the material to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran says its atomic programme is a peaceful drive to produce energy.
“Iran’s ongoing refusal to engage constructively on this issue leaves us no option but to implement these sanctions,” said British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
The longer Iran refuses to talk to the six world powers, “the greater the pressure and isolation Iran will bring upon itself,” he said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said at the weekend Tehran was ready to hold immediate talks on a nuclear swap deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil in May.
World powers have given the cold shoulder to that deal, a counter-proposal to the October agreement.
But Iran answered questions raised by the United States, Russia and France over the May deal in a letter delivered to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday, the agency said.
“The letter has been conveyed to the governments of France, Russia and the United States, as well as to the governments of Brazil and Turkey,” the agency said.
The new EU sanctions follow a similar move by the United States against Iran’s energy industry. The IAEA said the sector would suffer a “material impact.”
Iran is the world’s fourth largest producer of crude oil, but imports 40 percent of its fuel needs because it lacks enough refining capabilities to meet domestic demand.
Conditions
 Iran is ready to return to negotiations on a nuclear fuel swap without conditions, its envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Talking of a letter that Iran handed to the IAEA about the proposed nuclear fuel swap, Iran’s envoy to U.N. agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh said: “The clear message of this letter was Iran’s complete readiness to hold negotiations over the fuel for the Tehran reactor without any conditions.”
The issue of fuel for the Tehran reactor, which makes medical isotopes, was a central part of Iran’s negotiations with global powers which stalled last October, leading to fresh sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Queries
“IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano today received a letter from the government of Iran concerning the provision of nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.
The Vienna group, comprising Russia, France and the United States, had raised several questions regarding the deal proposed by Brazil, Turkey and Iran on May 17 that has since come to be known as the Tehran Declaration.
“The letter has been conveyed to the governments of France, Russia and the United States, as well as to the governments of Brazil and Turkey,” IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said.
The agency did not say how Iran had responded.
Iran’s Fars news agency reported earlier Monday that Iran’s response, in the form of a letter to the IAEA, was signed by the country’s atomic chief, Ali Akbar Salehi.
Iranian state television later quoted Tehran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as saying that he had handed over the letter.
The state television’s website said Iran had not laid down any preconditions for talks in its response, and had asserted that whenever the Vienna group was ready, Tehran would be prepared to swap the fuel.
The deal proposed that Iran send 1,200 kilograms of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey in return at a later date for high-enriched uranium to be used as fuel for a research reactor in the capital.
World powers cold-shouldered this proposal.
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Sanctions
Turkey will abide by UN sanctions on neighbouring Iran but will not follow tougher measures imposed by the United States and the European Union, a minister said in a newspaper interview Monday.
“We will fully implement UN resolutions but when it comes to individual countries’ demands for extra sanctions we do not have to,” Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek told the Financial Times.
“The facilitation of trade that is not prohibited under UN resolution should and will continue,” he said.
If a trade deal needs to be financed, “we will have to find a way to pay for it,” he added.
Turkey voted against a fourth round of UN sanctions against Iran when the Security Council, where it holds a non-permanent seat, approved the measures in June to increase pressure on Tehran over its nuclear programme.
Ankara argued that its “no” vote aimed to keep the door open for a negotiated settlement to the dispute under a nuclear fuel swap deal that Turkish and Brazilian leaders reached with Tehran in May.
The EU, which Turkey is seeking to join, hit Iran with fresh measures against its vital oil and gas industry on Monday.
Unacceptable
Russia on Monday angrily slammed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s criticism of Moscow in the nuclear crisis as unacceptable and irresponsible, as tensions spiral with its traditional ally.
Ahmadinejad last week dubbed his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev the “mouthpiece” of Iran’s enemies, in his strongest attack yet on Moscow after momths of rising tensions between the Kremlin and the Islamic republic.
“For us the recent public statements of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are categorically unacceptable,” a Russian foreign ministry statement said.
“We consider that instead of fruitless and irresponsible rhetoric, the Iranian leadership should take concrete, constructive steps towards the speediest regulation of the situation.”
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TEHRAN, Iran: The head of Iran’s opposition warned the country’s hard-line political leaders Monday that they could suffer the same fate as the deposed Shah if they continue to consolidate their grip on power.
The powerful comparison was Mir Hossein Mousavi’s first direct criticism of a ruling system that he was once firmly a part of and represented a bolder stance certain to provoke the authorities’ anger.
Specifically, he accused hard-liners of moving toward an oppressive, one-party system, something that the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi did in his last years in power by outlawing all but his Rastakhiz party.
“Pahlavi in the final years of the former regime declared Rastakhiz as the only party authorized to operate in the country and we all saw what his fate was,” Mousavi said in comments posted on his website Monday.
Mousavi, a former prime minister, was a fervent supporter of the 1979 revolution that threw out the Shah and brought cleric-led government to Iran before recasting himself as a leader of the reform-seeking opposition in last year’s disputed presidential election.
The protesters that swept Iranian cities after the vote claimed Mousavi was robbed of the presidency through election fraud. Later, their criticism widened to target Iran’s ruling establishment and its harsh crackdown on the demonstrators.
Mousavi, whose leadership of the beleaguered pro-reform camp has waxed and waned, did not follow them in taking on the establishment, limiting his criticism instead to the fraud allegations and authorities’ postelection crackdown.
His shift was apparently triggered by comments earlier this month by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said Iran has only one party and that is the party of Velayat, a reference to the position of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The existence of parties, political factions ... is necessary for the progress of the country,” Mousavi said.
He said the government was now focused on “reproducing dictatorship.”
Although Iran’s ruling system is now dominated by hard-liners, reformists and moderates still have a limited role and are heard in the parliament and in some state bodies such as the Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader on key issues.