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Erdogan's Visit To Iran
United States government had threatened the countries that do business with the Iranian companies to curtail their imports and the Turkish ambassador in Washington has asked the government in Ankara to comply.
The Turkish oil refiner Tupras has announced that the company has cut the imports by a fifth. Turkey imports about 30 percent of its oil from Iran. The energy minister said that Turkey would compensate for the oil lost by buying crude oil from Libya and Saudi Arabia.
He announced that he would buy 1 million tons crude oil from Libya in 2012. This would reduce the import from Iran. The deal with Libya, he added, was meant to diversify the country’s energy sources, rather than to comply with the sanctions.
Turkey said that it would only comply with sanctions if the sanctions were approved by a United Nations Security Council resolution. The apparent shift of position comes at a day after the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Iran, and said that his country encouraged the aspiration of all countries in the world to have a non-military nuclear program.
On that occasion, Turkey was trying to convince Iran to change its stance on Syria, a topic on which the two neighboring countries disagree. Turkey has always favored a diplomatic solution in Iran, while the United States have imposed sanctions and threatened to impose some more.
A new round of negotiations with Iran were announced for April and Iran would want them in Istanbul, Turkey, whereas the Western countries would favor a European capital. Turkish daily Zaman said that during the meeting of the prime minister Erdogan with the American president, in Seoul, where both attended a summit on nuclear weapons, the Turkish PM told the president that the Ayatollah Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, had rejected claims that Iran was building a nuclear weapon. Erdogan said that the ayatollah cited principles from Quran, which did not condone with the idea of weapons of mass destruction.
Zaman quotes Erdogan to have said that the West must have a correct and fair treatment for all countries that pursue the goal of acquiring nuclear energy for non-military purposes. Erdogan said that the West should not forget to apply the same standard to the nuclear weapons of Israel.
During his visit to Iran, Erdogan also promised to dismantle the controversial NATO radar placed on the Turkish territory, which had been a source of serious controversy between Turkey and Iran.
The radar was deployed by NATO as part of the missile defense system and Turkey said that it was not going to threaten Iran in any way. Turkey set a set of conditions upon which depends the continuation of the activity of the radar, leaders of the military said. The conditions refer to the fact that the data collected by the radar could be shared with non-NATO countries, mainly with Israel.
Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the radar would not disturb the Iranians and that the Turkish generals will be involved in the process of data collecting of the radar to ensure they are working within the frame of the agreed conditions.
The visit of the Turkish PM in Iran was seen by some of the analysts as a form of mediation between the Western countries and Iran, in hopes to avert further escalation of the conflict.
On Friday, U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton went to Saudi Arabia, where she spoke with the king Abdullah for almost two hours on the matter of imposing more sanctions on Iran and supplying the amount of oil that would be needed as soon as the American sanctions take effect.
During the talks with the Saudi King a commitment on a stable international oil market was reached, and arrangements were made for a cohesive defense strategy in the region. The Sunni oil producers have many technical and political divides among them but must be united in front of the Shiite threat from Iran.
The United States is already planning to sell the United Arab Emirates defensive missile technology. UAE and Saudi Arabia are the most advanced countries militarily in the Middle East.
The talks between the United States State Secretary Clinton and the Gulf Arab states will continue on Saturday at a security conference.
On Friday, Barack Obama cleared the way for the sanctions against Iran, which would take effect in June, and would refer to punishing the countries that continue to do business with Iran once the sanctions have been imposed.
The president of the United States had until Friday to decide whether to continue with imposing sanctions or to drop them. Obama decided to go on with the sanctions based on the assessment that there is enough oil supply on the international market to withstand the sanctions without producing any shortage or rise in the prices in the months to come.
The U.S. bill will sanction the Iran’s central bank, which is the one that mediates almost all the oil transactions. The move is intended to hurt the Iranian economy and provoke a shortage of money, which is needed for the nuclear program.
American bill of sanctions will target the countries that continue to do business with Iran, but will also exempt some of the countries from it. In other cases, it would demand the countries only to reduce to some extent the import from Iran.
The Iranian nuclear program has been cause for the Israeli cabinet to worry that Iran is producing more than civilian nuclear energy, and has threatened to strike the nuclear facilities in Iran.
During the talks between Barack Obama and the Israeli PM Netanyahu in February, Israel said it was not disposed to wait indefinitely for the measures to take effect, and would strike Iranian facilities before it is too late.
Barack Obama urged Israel to wait until the sanctions have taken effect, and promised to stand by Israel and defend it against any aggression by Iran. Though Obama sent a message that all options were on the table, he did not offer any guarantees of military support for an air strike.
The strike would have devastating effects on the entire region and would only slow down the nuclear program, not shut it down. Since the facilities are deep in the mountains, the probability of hitting them all is very reduced.
Russian and American intelligence said that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon yet, though they have the possibility to do it. Israel believes otherwise, based on the latest reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said earlier in the year that indications of a military component of the nuclear program exist.
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