SPEAKING
FREELY Sanctions on Iran a prelude to
conflict? By Prerna Mankad
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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Rhetorical pressure
on Iran to curb its nuclear program has soared to
new levels. Last month, French President Nicolas
Sarkozy told the United Nations General Assembly
that a nuclear-armed Iran would be an
"unacceptable risk to stability in the region and
in the world", and French Foreign Minister Bernard
Kouchner warned of the
possibility of war over Iran's nuclear program.
Germany, too, has hardened its stance,
with Chancellor Angela Merkel preparing to work
outside the United Nations to place greater
pressure on Iran. And just last week US President
George W Bush cautioned that Iran's pursuit of
nuclear weapons could lead to World War III.
Meanwhile, Iran has remained defiant on
its right to pursue nuclear energy, and Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has consistently
denied that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.
Reaching a mutual diplomatic agreement seems an
increasingly distant prospect - one that has
potentially been exacerbated by the replacement at
the weekend of Iran's relatively moderate nuclear
negotiator, Ali Larijani, by close Ahmadinejad
ally Saeed Jalili.
At the heart of the
strategy of the United States and its allies to
pressure Iran is the application of a third,
stronger round of sanctions. A new UN Security
Council sanctions resolution has been delayed
until at least November, awaiting reports from the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the
European Union on Iran's progress in meeting IAEA
requirements.
In the meantime, the US and
a number of European countries, including France
and Germany, are entertaining the idea of
administering their own, stronger sanctions regime
outside the United Nations, which would circumvent
the need for a UN Security Council consensus. But
for all the hopes pinned on Iranian sanctions,
either within or without the UN, there remain
serious limitations - and indeed risks - in using
sanctions to achieve foreign policy objectives.
An important recent study by David J
Lektzian of Texas Tech University and Christopher
M Sprecher of Texas A&M University reveals
conclusively that sanctions, in practice,
significantly increase the likelihood of
militarized conflict - by as much as six times -
between the sender and target countries. Countries
tend to employ sanctions that impose very few
economic costs on themselves, which sends the
wrong signal, a lack of resolve, to the target
country.
Consequently, Sprecher told this
writer, "The country being sanctioned views the
sanctions as weak and therefore becomes almost
provocative in its actions" - often daring the
sanctioning countries to react. The implications
for Iranian sanctions are stark.
Current UN
sanctions on Iran apply only to weapons exports to
the country, and freeze the assets of key
individuals and organizations suspected of
supporting Iran's uranium enrichment efforts.
Although unilateral US sanctions are more
expansive, Iran's main export, oil, is still free
to reach the international market. If its oil
exports were sanctioned, the Iranian economy would
be severely affected - but it wouldn't be alone, a
fact that has not escaped the Iranian leadership.
Clearly, signaling the strongest resolve
through oil sanctions against Iran is
prohibitively costly for the United States.
Moreover, veto-wielding Russia and China (the
latter overtook Japan last year as Iran's largest
trade partner) would likely never accede to such
measures. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin
has repeated his conviction that Iran is not
attempting to develop nuclear weapons.
Sanctions on Iran, therefore, necessarily
remain weak, making them more susceptible to
triggering militarized conflict rather than
preventing it. "I think that there's a greater
likelihood of conflict with Iran now in part
because of the sanctions," says Sprecher. "And I
think given the volatility within the region right
now, it wouldn't surprise me to see the United
States step up some sort of force toward the
Iranians, if, for nothing else, to show that,
'Hey, we do mean business'."
Also
heightening the risk of militarized conflict are
the "audience costs" generated by stepping up the
rhetorical pressure on Iran. When the US and its
allies publicly intensify their calls for Iran to
rein in its nuclear program, they face the
prospect of losing face and showing weakness if
Iran fails to accede to their demands.
Tying their hands in this way, however,
could at the same time lend greater credibly to
the sanctions threat. Lektzian explains, "If the
target understands that the sender is becoming
more and more resolute, and that it's harder and
harder for it to back down, the probability that
the sender would go to war increases."
The
paradox is clear: "Successful" sanctions, measured
by their ability to change the target's behavior,
inevitably entail the possibility of military
confrontation, especially in cases where the
sanctions themselves are perceived to be weak. The
challenge for the United States and its allies,
then, is how to prevent escalation toward military
conflict while still credibly conveying the signal
that they are serious about restricting Iran's
nuclear program. Should the United States pursue a
weaker coalition adopting stronger sanctions
against Iran, or seek a broader coalition that
will only support weaker sanctions?
Although weaker sanctions can signal lack
of resolve, adopting them in a public forum such
as the United Nations could increase the level of
audience costs, which in turn could increase the
probability of success. It would also signal to
Iran that other countries aside from the United
States are committed to preventing Iran from
acquiring nuclear weapons, isolating the regime
further.
Karim Sadjadpour, Iran expert at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
argues in favor of pursuing a broader multilateral
consensus. "What will be effective in changing
Iranian behavior is not the intensity of US and
European sanctions, but the robustness of the
international coalition ... [When even] the
Russians and the Chinese are not returning [the
Iranian leadership's] phone calls ... that's when
I think they start to recalculate," argues
Sadjadpour.
Foreign policy hawks in the
United States and elsewhere criticize the pursuit
of multilateral sanctions for not only failing to
influence Iran's nuclear posture, but for buying
time for Iran's leadership to achieve a nuclear
weapons capability, which some experts believe may
be just a few years away.
But Sadjadpour
notes that sanctions, particularly multilateral
sanctions, could also be buying time for a shift
toward a more moderate leadership in Iran, with
parliamentary elections set for March next year,
and presidential elections to follow in June 2009.
Crucial to the downfall of Iran's hardliners may
be the dire state of the country's economy, with
unemployment as high as 20% and inflation possibly
hitting 25%.
Sadjadpour explains, "The
political dynamics in Iran are quite fluid, so
it's not like we're dealing with a dictatorship.
President Ahmadinejad's mandate and the mandate of
these hardliners in parliament was really clear
when they were elected: to improve the economy.
[The] failures there will help more moderate,
internationalist officials get elected in the
parliament in 2008 and the presidency in 2009."
It remains to be seen whether this
prediction bears out. But perhaps even more
urgently, it remains to be seen whether the United
States and its allies will, in the interim, be
able to contain any unintended consequences
arising from their determined pursuit of stronger
sanctions against Iran at the expense of
multilateral support.
Prerna
Mankad is editorial assistant at Foreign
Policy magazine in Washington, DC.
(Copyright 2007 Prerna Mankad.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
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