COMMENT
Tough sanctions won't tame Tehran
By Shahir Shahidsaless
An array of senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Robert
Gates, special Middle East envoy George Mitchell and National Security Advisor
General James Jones, have visited Israel in recent days to talk about Iran.
While the high-level chats were in progress, US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton told the press on August 9: "The president [Barack Obama] ... said,
look, we need to take stock of this in September. If there is a response, it
needs to be on a fast track. We're not going to keep the window open forever."
These occurrences, and many others, signal that Washington has unexpectedly
stepped up its diplomatic and political approach to Iran.
The highlight of the Israel visits was Jones' "strategic meetings" with Israeli
counterparts. In his mission, Jones was accompanied
by US intelligence officials and experts from the State, Defense and the
Treasury departments. The mission was aimed at "the situation in Iran and ways
to stop the ayatollah regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon", according to
Ynetnews.
In Washington, meanwhile, the Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (RPSA), a bill
designed to limit Iran's access to gasoline and other refined petroleum
products by raising prices, has become before the US Congress. Furthermore,
according to a recent New York Times report, "the Obama administration is
talking with allies" about "the possibility of imposing an extreme economic
sanction against Iran" if the country doesn't respond to Obama's outreach.
The Senate Banking Committee held a series of hearings on the economic
sanctions on Iran and to evaluate the pros and cons of the RPSA. The hearings
were chaired by Senator Evan Bayh, the lead sponsor of the RPSA. Three of the
four panelists were Nicholas Burns, a former George W Bush administration
official, and two neo-conservative scholars, Mathew Levitt of the Washington
Institute and Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute. The panel
concluded that a "crippling sanctions" policy was the best way to deal with the
Iranian government.
The House of Representatives held similar hearings in which the advocates of
severe economic sanctions won a 4-to-2 majority. Among the panelists, Patrick
Clawson, of the Washington Institute, and Michael Rubin, of the American
Enterprise Institute, held positions that echoed the anti-Iran sentiment of the
Bush era.
With two significant international gatherings in September - the Group of 20
meeting and the United Nations General Assembly - Washington has given a
deadline of the end of September for the Iranian government to respond to
Obama's overture. Failure to meet the deadline will result in the unleashing of
harsh sanctions, according to Howard Berman, chairman of the Senate Foreign
Affairs Committee.
But on August 7, news broke that raised serious questions about the intentions
behind these sudden and orchestrated efforts to up the pressure on Iran.
According to a new report by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, Iran will not be capable of producing weapons-grade uranium before
2013. The document also revealed that the US intelligence community "has no
evidence that Iran has yet made the decision to produce highly enriched
uranium" and that "Iran is unlikely to make such a decision for at least as
long as international pressure and scrutiny persists".
What drew little attention was that the information about Iran's nuclear
capability was disclosed by the director of National Intelligence, Dennis
Blair, during a senate hearing in February. In other words, for the past six
months, the US government has been well aware that there was no imminent threat
by Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
Commonsense dictates that following this report, US policy towards Iran would
have slowed. Instead, escalating tactics moved to the top of the US foreign
policy agenda. And what's more surprising, on a tight deadline.
The reason for this revolves around the crisis in Tehran. Many right-wing
American policymakers and the Israel lobby consider this an opportune time to
bring the Iranian regime to its knees and to pressure it to abandon its nuclear
program.
"Draconian sanctions did not make sense in 2005, but given the new weakness and
vulnerability of the government of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, much tougher
sanctions make sense now," said Nicholas Burns, a State Department under
secretary for political affairs in the Bush administration, in an interview.
But tough sanctions might not be all the US has in store for Tehran. Apparently
pointing to alleged covert operations, Representative Dana Rohrabacher has
called for "more than just sanctions". Representative John Boozman, during the
congressional hearings on Iran, even proposed military action.
There may be some merit to the claim that Iran is still politically unstable.
The society is polarized as never before. There exists a hate-filled
ideological and cultural chasm between Ahmadinejad's supporters and opponents,
especially among the younger generation. Mir-Hossein Mousavi - the defeated
reformist presidential candidate - remains defiant and has become the de facto
opposition leader. Mousavi's high-echelon cleric and non-cleric supporters
still show resistance to disturb the political system.
The image of the government is seriously tainted by horror stories leaking from
detention centers. In one case, Kahrizak prison in southern Tehran was ordered
closed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei due to widespread abuse.
Controversy over Ahmadinejad's appointed vice president, Esfandiar Rahim
Mashai, who stepped down after the supreme leader's order to Ahmadinejad to
dismiss him, is not yet over; it is reaching new heights due to Ahmadinejad's
appointment of Mashai as his chief of staff, and the recent transfer of the
responsibilities and authorities of the vice president to Mashai's portfolio.
Considering all the disturbing issues in Iran, will crippling sanctions help
the US to bring the Iranian government to the negotiation table and force it to
suspend its nuclear activities? The answer is "no"; not only will such a plan
fail, there are three key reasons why it will also lead Iran and the world to
perilous consequences.
First, the advocates of stiff sanctions fail to see that the ruling elite,
notably Ahmadinejad and his group, have an ideological mandate and their
decisions are ultimately shaped by their fierce passion for Islam. Ahmadinejad
and his circle would consider tough sanctions as an opportunity, no a
deterrent. They believe wholeheartedly that they are entering an apocalyptic
age, one which will eventually result in their victory. It would be god's will
if they made peace with the enemy and it would be god's will if they ended up
in war.
Second, it has been a well-known strategy throughout history to transform
internal political and social threats into external confrontation, thus getting
rid of the internal threat. Debilitating sanctions or warlike conditions would
furnish the ruling elite with the opportunity to silence the opposition by
claiming it is working with the enemy.
Third, the Iranian government will not stand by as a spectator while it is
under embargo. It will react and will elevate the confrontation by any means.
It is naive to presume that the world could continue to conduct business as
usual through the Strait of Hormuz - the narrow channel south of Iran used for
the shipment of 40% of the globally traded oil - while the Iranian government
was suffocating under the "very tough sanctions" recommended by Clinton.
Intensified and crippling sanctions are only a preamble to war.
Shahir Shahidsaless is a Canadian-Iranian political analyst writing
mainly in Farsi. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering, and has
devoted the past 10 years predominantly to researching and writing about the
Middle East and international affairs for Farsi-speaking magazines, papers and
news websites both inside and outside the country. He has authored a book,
which has been published in Iran and Germany. He can be contacted at shahir@iranamerica.com
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