West will push for more sanctions against Iran

  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sits in an electric vehicle during his visit to the 2nd National Festival of Innovation and Prosperity in Tehran on February 8, 2010. Iran was expected to formally announce to the UN nuclear watchdog its plans to enrich uranium to a higher level, but insisted it will stop the process if a UN-backed nuclear deal is clinched.

UNITED NATIONS — Western patience with Iran ran out Monday as the Islamic republic announced new nuclear and military ambitions while intensifying a crackdown on domestic political opponents.
The United States and France pledged in Paris to push for a new set of international sanctions against Iran over its refusal to roll back its nuclear program.
Separately, the United States and the European Union issued a joint statement warning Iran's leaders to respect international human rights obligations as the country prepares to commemorate the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran is set to deliver a "punch" that will stun world powers during the week's celebrations.
But the U.S. and EU interpret that as a signal for more repression after Iranian opposition supporters pledged to launch anti-government protests on Thursday, when traditional regime-sponsored marches mark the anniversary of the revolution.
"The clerics should know that, since imprisonment, beatings and other confrontational methods are done in the name of Islam and the Islamic regime, it is hurting Islam, and we all should try to stop," said Mir Hossein Mousavi, whose supporters say his defeat in the June presidential election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power was rigged.
U.S. President Barack Obama had given Iran until the end of 2009 to agree to talks about its nuclear program, and efforts continued into the New Year.
"It's led to nothing," French Defence Minister Herve Morin said after meeting with Robert Gates, U.S. Secretary of Defence.
"We don't have any other option than to go to the (United Nations) Security Council for further measures."
Western powers have successfully pressed in the Council for three earlier sets of sanctions against Iran, arguing the Islamic republic's claim its nuclear program is peaceful is cover for a bid to build a nuclear bomb.
"We have to face the reality that if Iran continues and develops nuclear weapons it almost certainly will provoke proliferation in the Middle East," Gates said.
Though serving as council president this month, France has been among the most hawkish of the council's veto-bearing permanent members in signalling the need to increase pressure on Iran sooner rather than later.
But while Russia has begun to reverse its former hard-line opposition to what would be a fourth round of sanctions against Iran, China, whose economic expansion relies in part on continued supplies of Iranian oil, remained uncommitted.
Evidence emerging Monday that China had overtaken the EU to become Iran's largest trading partner underscores the economic tie.
Iran may also benefit from increased tensions between the Washington and Beijing over a range of unrelated issues, including the question of Internet freedom, China's pegging of its currency, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and Obama's pledge to meet the Dalai Lama, accused by China of pushing for Tibetan independence.
But Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said last month that, if Iran remained intransigent, it would face further sanctions even without UN agreement.
In Ottawa Monday, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said Canada would "work with other members of the international community toward a solution that will hold Iran to account."
Iran formally told the UN's nuclear watchdog agency Monday it will begin enriching uranium to the 20 per cent level needed for powering a medical research reactor in Tehran.
Western countries had sought to avoid this out of concern such a level could be used to develop a crude nuclear device.
At the very least, it would allow Iran to move closer to gaining the capability of developing the highly enriched uranium necessary for a more sophisticated nuclear weapon.
Iran currently is enriching uranium up to 4.5 per cent for its under-construction nuclear power plant, which has been built with Russia's help, and will be operational later this year.
"Today we handed over the letter," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Iran's Arabic language al Alam state television.
He said IAEA inspectors would be invited to monitor the enrichment, which would start Tuesday.
But it remained unclear Monday whether the Iranian declaration was aimed at putting pressure on the West to accept Iran's terms for a proposed swap of its low-enriched uranium.
While the West had sought to have Iran's uranium additionally enriched outside the country so that it could not be diverted for use in a nuclear bomb-making program in the near term, the latest Iranian proposal, set out by Ahmadinejad last week, included a time frame the United States and the European powers deemed unacceptable.
Soltanieh also told al Alam Iran would, in the next Persian calendar year, which begins in March, build 10 uranium enrichment centres.
But many experts question whether Iran has the infrastructure to achieve such a goal any time soon. It currently has one functioning enrichment plant.