Agence France Presse – US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran Monday that it could face sanctions and international isolation over its nuclear program such as those faced by North Korea.
"I expect the Security Council to begin work this week on an Iran sanctions resolution," Rice told reporters. "So the Iranian government should consider the course that it is on, which could lead to simply to further isolation."
The UN Security Council unanimously voted for wideranging sanctions against North Korea over its defiant nuclear test last week.
The United States is gathering international support to also punish Iran for defying a UN Security Council decision calling on the Islamic republic to halt uranium enrichment, a process that could lead to nuclear bomb-making.
After four rounds of unsuccessful talks aimed at securing an enrichment suspension, the European Union is set to return the Iranian nuclear file to the UN Security Council Tuesday for possible enforcement action.
"The greatest challenge to the nonproliferation regime comes from countries that violate their pledges to respect the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The North Korean regime is one such case, but also so is Iran," Rice said.
The Islamic republic is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The Iranian government, she said, had been watching the developments surrounding the North Korean case and "it can now see that the international community will respond to threats from nuclear proliferation."
But Iran says it will buckle under pressure.
"Pressure and threats against Iran’s nuclear program will not affect Iran in any way," the student news agency ISNA quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying.
Uranium enrichment lies at the heart of Western concerns over Iran’s nuclear program. The process can be used to make the fuel for civil reactors but in highly extended form can also produce the fissile core of an atom bomb.
Iran insists its nuclear program is solely for civilian energy purposes, but Tehran’s arch-foe Israel and the United States suspect the real aim is a covert weapons program.
