War Is Peace, Sanctions Are Diplomacy

War Is Peace, Sanctions Are Diplomacy

Carah Ong

November 23, 2007

(Carah Ong is Iran policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington, DC.)


The White House is pressing ahead with its stated goal of persuading the UN Security Council to pass far-reaching sanctions to punish Iran for refusing to suspend its nuclear research program. Sanctions are what President George W. Bush is referring to when he pledges to nervous US allies that he intends to “continue to work together to solve this problem diplomatically.” The non-diplomatic solution in this framing of the “problem,” presumably, would be airstrikes on nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic.

With its portrayal of UN and unilateral US sanctions as part of a diplomatic effort, the Bush administration has successfully confused much media coverage of the Iranian-Western confrontation over Iran’s enrichment of uranium. Sanctions are punitive measures, not serious diplomacy, and the Bush administration has never undertaken a sustained diplomatic initiative aimed either at inducing Iran to cease enriching uranium or at soothing broader US-Iranian tensions. Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s persistent refusal to take military options “off the table,” combined with its intensified rhetoric against Iran, has made sanctions palatable to allies, as well as to some of the most dovish members of Congress and the American public -- but without addressing the political disputes that keep the US and Iran on a collision course. Congress, by and large, has merely greased the skids.

EXECUTIVE ORDERS

On September 28, the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the US -- issued a joint statement, along with Germany and the European Union, agreeing to wait to discuss a potential third round of sanctions on Iran until International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana delivered progress reports on negotiations with Iran in November. No sooner had the IAEA released its November 15 report than the Bush administration renewed its push for stiffer penalties on the Islamic Republic.

US spokespersons seized upon the IAEA’s statement that Iranian cooperation with its investigators, while “sufficient” and “timely,” has been “reactive rather than proactive.” This “reactive” posture, along with Iran’s blockage of spot inspections of nuclear sites (as required by the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), made it impossible for the IAEA to assert that Iran’s program is geared exclusively toward peaceful generation of nuclear power, as Iran claims. The US dismissed the positive aspects of the Agency’s report. As State Department briefer Sean McCormack put it, “Partial credit doesn’t cut it when you’re talking about issues of whether or not Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.” While the report did not give Iran a clean bill of health, its overall content suggests that there is room for real diplomacy to resolve outstanding issues.

The Bush administration, however, had tipped its hand, long before the IAEA report’s release, that only additional coercive measures would be forthcoming. In August, it was leaked to the press that the State Department was considering designating the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps -- created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 to protect the Islamic Revolution from domestic and foreign foes -- as a terrorist organization. European allies expressed strong opposition to the idea, warning that such a unilateral initiative could alienate Security Council member China, thus forestalling another round of UN sanctions. The end result was Bush’s executive order on October 25, imposing new unilateral sanctions and designating the Revolutionary Guards as a “proliferator of weapons of mass destruction” and the Guards’ elite Quds Force as a “supporter of terrorism.”

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http://www.merip.org/mero/mero112307.html

cause and hanging its leader. Whatever Sadaam did, he should have been tried at the Hague International Court, not by Shite judges, who kept Bush/Reagan out of the discourse.