The United Nations Security Council has already imposed some financial sanctions on Iran, but Miliband's statement appeared to be a strong hint that Britain favours further financial sanctions as a way to raise the pressure on Tehran. Answering a question in parliament, he said it would not be wise to give a public commentary on the sort of sanctions that were being developed.
"Just to give ... one obvious example, when one is considering financial sanctions it doesn't make sense to give six, eight, 10 weeks' notice to some of the entities that might be involved of the sort of financial sanctions that might be coming in," he said.
"We believe that financial sanctions, to take one example, have an important role to play in exerting pressure at the appropriate points in the regime and not affecting the Iranian people," he said. "I think there is quite a wide range of agreement that we do need to explore the whole range of sanctions opportunities because Iran over the last three months has been absolutely clear that it is not willing to have (an) intensive dialogue with the international community," he said.
Saturday's meeting came after Iran ignored US President Barack Obama's December 31, 2009, deadline to respond to an offer from the six powers of economic and political incentives in exchange for halting its nuclear enrichment programme. Washington and its western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of its civilian atomic programme. Iran says the programme is designed to generate electricity so it can export more of its valuable oil and gas.