Iran faces a fresh set of sanctions over its refusal to abide by regulations governing nuclear programmes, the US pointman for the Middle East, Jeffrey Feltman, said on Sunday. "There's a body of law and procedures and regulations that govern nuclear programmes. Iran is simply ignoring those. There have got to be consequences for that," Feltman said in an interview with AFP.
"The international community needs to be speaking with one voice to show Iran that there are consequences of that, and sanctions become part of this discussion."
Sanctions, however, were not the first choice of action for the United States, Feltman said on the sidelines of a Gulf security conference in Manama, Bahrain. "The preferred choice is that Iran would restore international confidence through other means," said the assistant secretary of state. "Had Iran, for example, shared all of its documentation, shared access to all the officials who were involved in the Qom (nuclear) enrichment facility, that would have been a step towards restoring confidence."
Iran, which is already enriching uranium in defiance of UN sanctions at a plant in Natanz, revealed in September it had been building a second uranium enrichment plant inside a mountain near the Shia holy city of Qom. The disclosure of its existence triggered widespread outrage in the West, which suspects Iran is enriching uranium with an ultimate goal of using it to make atomic weapons, a charge Tehran vehemently denies.
While sanctions imposed on Iran have "not resulted in a change of Iranian behaviour," they have had an impact by raising the cost of business in the country, said Feltman, who was appointed to his post in August. "It's something that has got to make some Iranian policy makers think twice about the way they're going," he said.