At the same time, the minister noted that sometimes sanctions were unavoidable. “That was exactly what the situation was in the case of the most recent UN Security Council resolution, which was passed last July,” Lavrov said.
“Sanctions had to be applied because all the calls to Iran to resume negotiations in the 5+1 format [five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany] had had no effect,” the Russian foreign minister stressed.
“Iran was stubbornly refusing to respond to the appeals of the international community aimed at promoting closer cooperation between Iran and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] in order to resolve the existing problems and make sure that Iran’s nuclear program was purely peaceful.”
Lavrov said, “The fact that we backed that resolution does not mean that we shall now support a further toughening of sanctions.”
Lavrov was quite firm about his opposition to sanctions. However, Lavrov was also quite firm in opposing sanctions just before shifting and supporting each of the four rounds of sanctions that have so far been approved by the UN Security Council.
The last round of UN sanctions were approved very swiftly after Lavrov suddenly switched from opposing to supporting sanctions the day after Brazil, Turkey and Iran issued their joint declaration on Iran’s nuclear program. Some have suspected that Russia turned around because it resented Brazilian and Turkish efforts to involve themselves in the issue.