Mixed US Signals.

There are two different messages concerning Iran from Washington: One is that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, of the hawkish camp, are try-ing to convince the world the US going through all means of pressure to avoid a war, and that if war does happen, responsibility for it rests with Iran and all those who are preventing the UNSC from sanctioning military action. The other - coming from the dovish camp which includes Ms Rice, Burns and Defence Secretary Robert Gates - says war must be avoided by all possible means of pressure and that Iran's containment through these means will ultimately force Iran to comply with all UNSC demands and curb its regional ambitions.

It is in the latter context that Burns on Oct. 25 said: "We do not believe that conflict is inevitable. This [Oct. 25] decision [against Quds, the IRGC, etc] today supports the diplomacy, and in no way, shape or form does it anticipate the use of force".

Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Washington Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), describes the Oct. 25 US action as "a warning shot across the bow, not that the US is going to invade Iran, but that Iran has pushed the level of escalation, particularly inside Iraq (where the Quds Force is allegedly aiding both Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias in their war against US forces), to unacceptable levels. In many ways, this kind of warning is more a demonstration of restraint than a signal that we're going to war".

Still, after 18 months in which the Bush administration has touted the virtues of collective action against Iran by the US and its allies, the new sanctions marked a turn towards unilateralism. The shift represented a tacit acknowledgment that the diplomatic strategy pressed most vigorously by Ms Rice and the other doves has been ineffective, and it prompted fresh criticism on Oct. 25 from Russia, as President Vladimir Putin asked: "Why make the situation worse, bring it to a dead end, threaten sanctions or even military action?".

The New York Times on Oct. 26 said: "The Bush administration clearly hopes to enlist allies in its new, more stringent stance - in part because the United States, having maintained its own stiff sanctions against Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979, does not have much leverage left itself. The administration hopes its influence can turn Iran into a political and economic pariah from which more foreign institutions will shy away".

Rice said: The sanctions will "provide a powerful deterrent to every international bank and company that thinks of doing business with the Iranian government". Yet, the paper said, "[US] officials acknowledged that past attempts to enlist allies in limiting their business ties to Iran have come up short. In each instance, they acknowledged, some other countries have partly offset the sanctions". Burn noted that China, for instance, had increased trade with Iran in the past year. Russian, Indian, European and even Canadian companies continue to do business with many different sectors of the Iranian economy, particularly its all-important petroleum industry.

Rice said US officials would continue to work with their European, Russian and Chinese counterparts to formulate a new set of UNSC sanctions to rein in Tehran's nuclear ambitions. But she also said she would be willing to "meet with my Iranian counterpart anytime, anywhere", as long as Tehran first suspended its nuclear activities, a long-standing US condition for such talks.

The US is not accusing the entire IRGC of being a terrorist organisation, a step advocated by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, who voted in favour of such a measure in September and has since come under attack from anti-war members of the Democratic Party. Some conservatives within the administration had also pushed for the broader declaration. But the Oct. 25 announcement is still an ambitious attempt to squeeze the upper echelons of the theocracy, including the Defence Ministry. It marks the first time the US has tried to use the terrorist label and the sanctions associated with it to isolate or punish another state's military.

In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini shrugged off the Oct. 25 move, saying America's hostile policies ran counter to international regulations and were "doomed to fail". Hosseini said the US produced nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and had supported what he called terrorist groups.

Israel, on the other hand, welcomed the Oct. 25 move. Sallai Meridor, its ambassador to the Washington, called it "a major diplomatic step in the effort to prevent Iran - a global menace and leading sponsor of terrorism - from obtaining nuclear weapons, which threatens international peace and security".