US vice president Biden says Iran sanctions likely by early May

The vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, said yesterday that he expects the United Nations to implement new sanctions against Iran by early next month.

Biden said that "I believe you will see a sanction regime coming out by the end of this month, beginning of next month", adding that said that China, which had previously been opposed to sanctions against Iran, would take part in the latest round. UN diplomats are presently engaged in the process of developing the new sanctions, which will be the fourth resolution against Iran's nuclear program.

According to Biden, the latest sanctions would mark the first time the world was unified in its opposition to Iran's nuclear program. He noted that "[t]veryone from the Israeli prime minister straight through to the British prime minister to the president of Russia, everyone agrees the next step we should take is the UN sanction route." The Obama administration, leading the effort for further sanctions against Iran, is confident China will be in support of such actions, despite being a close trading partner with Iran.

Biden also said that Israel has pledged not to take military action against Iran in the near future, and would instead wait to see what effect sanctions have on Iran. He commented: "They're [Israel] not going to do that." Iran and Israel have long been at odds, and Israel has not ruled out launching a preemptive strike against Iran before it develops nuclear weapons. Numerous Western countries have claimed that developing nuclear weapons is the ultimate goal of Iran's nuclear program, although Tehran claims that the program is for civilian purposes only.