"To appear to back off, when the Iranians are proceeding pell-mell with their nuclear program, would be very difficult for the administration, particularly in an election year," said Stuart E. Eizenstat, a former senior official at the Treasury and State Departments who helped draft sanctions against Iran during the Clinton administration.
Joshua Stanton, a lawyer who previously worked for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and helped draft sanctions against North Korea, said bilateral talks between the North and South would undermine that strategy.
Mr. Revere attributed North Korea's reaction on Tuesday to an accumulation of perceived affronts: China's cooperation in drafting the sanctions, the annual military exercises under way between the United States and South Korea, and a hardened attitude by the South's newly elected president, Park Geun-hye.
After all, the UN Security Council took its time drafting new sanctions after the January nuclear test.
The European Union was drafting new sanctions against Syria, he added, calling on other nations to pressure Assad.
But Pyongyang struck a defiant tone Monday, insisting that it would "not put our self-defensive nuclear deterrent on the negotiating table," and threatening revenge against the U.S. for drafting the sanctions.
The diplomats declined to divulge details about the draft sanctions resolution.
In the ensuing flurry of diplomatic jujitsu, the U.S. on Tuesday presented a new draft sanctions resolution to the U.N. Security Council.
Its U.N. ambassador, Li Baodong, told Reuters the 15-nation Security Council was aiming for a Thursday vote on a draft sanctions resolution, which was agreed to by Washington and Beijing after three weeks of negotiations.
The current 10-page UN draft sanctions resolution was already diluted to death by permanent members Russia and China - and whatever bellicose language remains will be further shot down at the Security Council by non-permanent members Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon (without unanimity at the Security Council new sanctions are for all practical purposes dead).
