Iran continued to defy international pressure over its nuclear programme through the weekend. Iranian leaders warned that if it were subjected to economic sanctions by the United Nations Security Council, it would dramatically raise the price of oil. “Any sanctions from the west could possibly raise oil prices beyond levels the west expects,” Iran’s economy minister, Davoud Jafari, said recently.

Meanwhile, CNN reports that the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced it would hold a conference to examine the Holocaust’s “scientific aspects and its repercussions.” Recently, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech, “They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred, and place this above God, religions and the prophets.”

The Times of London reports that diplomats are gathering in London to discuss what steps should be taken to deal with Iran’s position. Officials from Russia, the US, and China will meet with representatives of the so-called “E3” — Britain, France, and Germany — to decide if Iran should be referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions.

Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said President George Bush should not be afraid of strong-arming Russia and China to take a firm stance against Iran: “They need stuff from us,” he said. “They need trade. They need all kinds of assistance. We ought to play hardball with them.”

Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour, however, reportedly said that with the price of oil at $60 a barrel and with the US still entrenched in Iraq, “the threat of confrontation didn’t mean as much as it would have meant a few years ago, when oil was $30 a barrel and the Iraq war hadn’t yet started.” Sadjapour said that for all the tough talk by US politicians, military options are also limited.

A situation like you see in Iraq is out of question. Iran realises that, the US realises that. The second possible issue is what’s called ‘surgical strikes,’ and I think given the precedent of Osirak, Iraq’s nuclear reactor which the Israelis bombed in 1981, the Iranians have dispersed their sites. Some of them are underground, so it’s not clear that if there were surgical strikes, they would be constructive. You don’t know if you’ve got the right sites; there might be clandestine sites you don’t know about. So neither of those options is very good.

There seems to be some difference over how quickly Western nations will refer Iran to the Security Council. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said that there should be “no rush” to international sanctions. The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants a vote “as quickly as possible” to refer Iran.

But David Hirst, a reporter for The Guardian, writes that the US-led invasion of Iraq has turned Iran into a regional power. And if the US plan for Iraq does not succeed, and if Iraq falls into open civil war, it will only enhance Iran’s status. Hirst says that if Iran is attacked by Israel or the US, then the response is very likely to be as severe as the Iranians have been promising for some time now. — The Christian Science Monitor