Europeans paddle in troubled
waters By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
This week, as the European Union inches
closer to imposing a total oil embargo on Iran,
thus escalating tensions to dangerous new levels,
it is important to scrutinize the causes of what
is rapidly turning into a major international
crisis with unforeseen consequences, and to ponder
the potential option of alternative Western
policies that would prevent yet another crisis of
choice, rather than necessity.
Representatives from 27 countries of the
EU began talks on Thursday for an agreement on
banning the purchase of Iranian oil. EU foreign
ministers had agreed late last year to work toward
such a ban with the aim of blocking funding for
Iran's nuclear
program that some suspect is
designed to develop nuclear weapons - a charge
Tehran strongly denies.
An EU official was
quoted on Thursday as saying that "significant
issues remain and no agreement is expected before
the end of January". In 2010, crude oil from Iran
accounted for about 5.8% of total European
imports.
The official Iranian news agency
IRNA quoted a member of parliament as saying that
pressure from "bullying nations" made the country
"more resilient", while Economic Minister called
the EU's move "an economic war".
The EU
move follows US President Barack Obama last week
signing off on a law that slaps sanctions on
Iran’s central bank, also aimed at curtailing the
country's oil sales.
To many Iranians as
well as outside observers, any European ban on
Iranian oil would be as unjustified as a similar
ban that was imposed on the country after the
nationalization of its oil industry in 1951. Then,
the British government, which had long-term
neo-colonial agreements with Iran giving it
possession of 85% of oil proceeds without
financial scrutiny, managed to rally the US and
other European governments, culminating in a joint
US-British covert action that overthrew the
democratically elected government of Mohammad
Mosadegh. It was replaced with a compliant puppet
regime for the next quarter of century, until that
was overthrown by a populist revolt led by the
nationalistic clergy in 1979.
Since then,
neither the US nor Europe has formally apologized
to the nation, seeking instead to restore their
hegemony over the geostrategically important
country one way or another, eg, initially by
supporting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's illegal
invasion of Iran in September 1980 then turning a
blind eye to his use of chemical weapons.
With the Western missions against several
Middle Eastern nations in the past decade alone,
the last being Libya, where under a lame United
Nations authorization the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization gave itself the license to wage an
almost full-out war and humanitarian disaster in
the name of saving the country, the stage is now
set for regime change in both Syria and Iran, two
"rogue" regimes that defy Western (and Israeli)
scripts for regional order.
Geopolitically, any substantial weakening
of Iran would be a definite minus for both Russia
and China, two favorite targets of US power, and
it is therefore up to those two nations to resist
the latest Western efforts seeking (a) to weaken
Russia's eastern flank and thus to sow discord in
Central Asia, and (b) to undermine China's energy
security.
A prudent counter move by Russia
and China would be to upgrade Iran's status in the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) from
observer to full member, and to enhance the
organization's cooperative security measures to
protect their members from Western machinations.
The SCO is an inter-governmental mutual-security
organization founded in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
However, whereas Moscow has detected
evidence of a major Western disinformation
campaign on Iran's nuclear program, Beijing has
been comparatively more reticent, perhaps
miscalculating the short- and long-term
implications of oil sanctions affecting its energy
security. A narrow focus on Iran energy sanctions
that neglects to contextualize it within the
broader parameters of global, ie, great power
rivalry, is self-defeating to both Russia and
China.
Former head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Hans Blix, recently
confirmed there is no evidence that Iran is
manufacturing nuclear weapons.
Iran's
enrichment activities are fully monitored by the
IAEA's surveillance cameras, there have been
regular inspection of Iran's facilities, some on
short notice, and to date the United Nations'
atomic watchdog has not detected any diversion of
nuclear material.
Nor has Iran breached
its international obligations by seeking to
possess a nuclear fuel cycle under the articles of
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as confirmed
by six former Western ambassadors to Tehran in
their opinion column last year.
Western
sanctions on Iran would be justifiable only when
there was a smoking gun and/or solid evidence of
nuclear proliferation on Iran's part, not the
present case, with Iran continuing to implement
the terms of its safeguard agreement with the
IAEA.
Clearly, the Iran nuclear crisis is
good news for the Western military-industrial
complex, which profits from the huge sales of
Western military hardware to Saudi Arabia and
other oil sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf, the
latest being the sale of US$30 billion worth of
used US fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, much as this
translates into an intensified arms race in the
oil-rich region.
"If the European Union
foolishly follows the American lead against Iran,
it will inflict a major wound on its own unity
since several European countries including Turkey,
Greece, Italy and Spain are heavily dependent on
Iran's oil," says a Tehran University political
science professor on the condition of anonymity.
He adds that he expected the oil sanctions
to be "watered down" due to the wave of
exemptions. "If the West wants to play hard ball
with Iran, then they should expect collateral
damage to their other 'safe' oil supplies, because
Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz - even dozens
of boats full of Iranian students could do this,
as they shut down the British Embassy." (He was
referring to the storming of the British Embassy
in Tehran last November, to which Britain
responded by expelling Iranian diplomats and
ordering the Iranian Embassy in London to close.)
An Iranian flotilla blocking oil tankers
at Hormuz might instigate a harsh American
military reaction, not unlike Israel's deadly
assault on the Free Gaza flotilla in international
waters last year, but with more dire consequences.
Iran's options to scuttle the free flow of
oil to the Western world are not limited to
sinking ships at the strait or flexing naval
muscles.
Akin to acts of civil
disobedience reminiscent of anti-whaling
activists, masses of Iranian protesters on boats
could play a role in temporary shutting down the
waterway so vital to the Western economy.
Before following the US and appeasing
Israel (which is nuclear armed), Europeans would
be advised to take a healthy pause and think about
the dire implications of their planned economic
war on Iran.
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