Carrots and Sticks for Iran

The major world powers have reached an agreement on a package of incentives to be presented to Iran - along with the threat of sanctions if they do not comply.

There had been some concern that Russia and/or China would not agree to any punitive measures against Iran becuase of their oil and technology ties but, until we're able to see the actual details of this proposal, we won't be sure how influential those two countries were in perhaps softening any penalties.

Sanctions could entail visa bans and a freeze on assets of senior Iranian officials before resorting to trade measures, they said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who announced the offer of talks on Wednesday, said a last-resort military option, should talks or sanctions prove futile, remained on the table.

But Washington, angling for firm Russian support, had accepted language in a proposed Security Council resolution to underpin the offer that would rule out an immediate threat of military strikes on Tehran, U.S. and European officials said.

That ought to have been a no-brainer, since the IAEA's ElBaradei announced that Iran was not an 'imminent nuclear threat' earlier this week. This is no logical reason for a militray strike on Iran at this point. But, as I've written before, that won't necessarily stop Bush from attacking anyway. He would just do it without UN approval.