WaPo claims Bush/Cheney's new unilateral sanctions on Iran are part of a "diplomatic offensive"

Friday, October 26, 2007

US Sanctions on Iran

The Bush administration announced wideranging new sanctions on Iran on Thursday, which target three Iranian banks, nine companies associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and several individuals, as well as the IRGC (roughly analogous to the National Guard in the US, i.e. a populist adjunct to the formal Iranian army).

These unilateral sanctions clearly reflect frustration on the part of Bush/Cheney that they have not been able to convince the UN Security Council to apply international sanctions. (Iran has not been demonstrated to be doing anything that is illegal in international law.)

The sanctions may work but may not. The Dutch Shell corporation is thinking seriously of bucking the US and helping develop Iranian oil and gas production. China is negotiating a big deal with Iran. The world is energy hungry. Iran has energy. The US is a debtor nation, and has gone even more deeply into debt under Bush. It may just not be able to stand in the way of the development of Iranians energy.

The hypocrisy of the Bush case is obvious when it complains about Iran supporting Hizbullah and Hamas. The Kurds based in American Iraq have done much worse things to Turkey in the past month than Hizbullah did to Israel in June of 2006. Yet when Israel launched a brutal and wideranging war on all of Lebanon, destroying precious infrastructure and dumping enormous amounts of oil into the Mediterranean, damaging Beirut airport, destroying essential bridges in Christian areas, and then releasing a million cluster bomblets on civilian areas in the last 3 days of the war-- when Israel did all that, Bush and Cheney applauded and argued against a 'premature' cease-fire! Yet they are trying to convince Turkey just to put up stoically with the PKK terrorists who have killed dozens of Turkish troops recently and kidnapped 8 (again, more than the number of Iraeli troops that were kidnapped). Bush's coddling of the PKK in Iraq is not different from Iran's support for Hizbullah, except that the PKK is a more dangerous and brutal organization than Hizbullah.

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Among the more fantastic charges that Bush made against Iran was that its government was actively arming and helping the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban are extremist Sunnis who hate, and have killed large numbers of Shiites. Shiite Iran is unlikely to support them. The neo-Taliban are a threat to the Karzai government, which represents the Northern Alliance (Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks) along with non-Taliban Pushtuns. The Hazara are Shiite clients of Iran, and both the Tajiks and the Uzbeks are close to Tehran. The neo-Taliban are being supported by Pakistan, which resents the Northern Alliance, not by Iran, which favors it.

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Sanction This

Posted by Ilan Goldenberg
Rarely does a newspaper as good as the Washington Post manage to have three stories about one subject in one day and absolutely completely blow all of them. But today they hit the trifecta with the Iran sanctions story.

First, the ed board piece. This isn't shocking. Fred Hiatt is often off the mark, but calling these sanctions part of a "diplomatic offensive" and saying they are a "welcome boost" is simply ridiculous. I am not opposed to the sanctions on principle, but they need to be part of a broader diplomatic strategy. The United States should be ratcheting up the pressure on Iran, but at the same time it should be maximizing the opportunities for agreement by offering more financial carrots or at the very least sitting down to talk with the Iranians about common interests and disagreements. Instead, the administration sticks to its pigheaded approach of making bilateral talks conditional on the suspension of uranium enrichment activities. It's been five years people! That policy has failed. The sanctions would make a lot more sense if we knew exactly what we wanted to get out of them, or if the Iranians had a clear idea of what they would need to do to get rid of them. But neither of those points are clear. So the sanctions aren't going to do anything other than just escalate tensions.

Second, is a story talking about how the President is using sanctions as a way to prevent war and provide more flexibility for the next President. I think he's doing just the opposite and inevitably locking the next President into a choice of accepting an Iran with nuclear weapons or trying air strikes. The U.S. continues to twiddle its thumbs and refuses to talk to the Iranians as they build up their nuclear capabilities. Everyday that the U.S. waits it loses leverage. These sanctions only make the situation more complicated. Sanctions are very easy to slap on. However, removing them will require the next President to get a major concession from the Iranians or face significant political heat at home.

Finally, the Post dedicates an above the fold front page story to the fact that oil prices will rise if the U.S. attacks Iran. In other news, humans walk on two legs and mint chocolate chip ice cream tastes both minty and chocolaty.