Word: iran
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...With Iran having refused to accept the terms of an international offer to exchange most of its enriched-uranium stockpile for reactor fuel, the Obama Administration had hoped to up the ante with new U.N. sanctions by February. But diplomats say June is more likely the earliest point at which the Security Council could be persuaded to act. And even in the best-case scenario, new U.N. sanctions are unlikely to carry the "bite" promised by Clinton - measures that would inflict sufficient pain on Iran to change the calculations of its regime. (See pictures of terror in Tehran...
...also moving to adopt "coalition of the willing" sanctions in conjunction with European allies - and, they hope, with support from Arab countries, although it's unclear whether such support would be forthcoming. The purpose of such measures would be to punish third-country companies doing business with Iran. A number of Western oil companies have recently stopped supplying gasoline to Iran in anticipation of such measures, suggesting they could be more effective than U.N. sanctions. But the Administration is also concerned about hurting ordinary Iranians, or shattering whatever international consensus currently exists on dealing with the Iran issue. And opposition...
...Hopes that a change of regime in Iran would somehow break the nuclear stalemate have dimmed, with the authorities having successfully contained the challenge of the Green Movement (whose leaders, in any case, publicly backed their country's nuclear program). And despite President Obama keeping the proverbial "all options" on the table, the U.S. military leadership is opposed to trying to resolve the nuclear standoff by force: Bombing Iran's facilities would likely only set back its nuclear program by a few years (and make weaponization more likely), goes the reasoning, at a cost of a possibly starting a calamitous...
...does the Obama Administration make good on its promise to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? One of Clinton's predecessors, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, has some unsolicited advice: "I don't see a set of sanctions coming along that would be so detrimental to the Iranians that they are going to stop [their nuclear] program," Powell said in an interview with Bloomberg TV to be broadcast next weekend. "So ultimately, the solution has to be a negotiated...
...Administration may have decided that engagement was tried, and failed, when Iran refused the terms of the reactor-fuel deal, but others - like the Chinese - believe the negotiations route has a long way to go. The current deadlock suggests that Iran is unlikely to accept the terms currently on offer by the West for resolving the dispute, but that doesn't necessarily preclude any deal - Iran has floated a number of counter offers for exchanging smaller amounts of uranium or storing it on Iranian soil, but none of these has so far been acceptable to the U.S. and its allies...