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.
Not to mention the US-backed Kurdish front against Iran itself, as Farideh Farhi explains.
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.
That Iran is trying to destabilize the Shiite government in Baghdad is absurd. The Bush administration charge that Iran is the source of explosively formed projectiles is based on very little evidence and flies in the face of common sense; in fact these bombs are probably made in Iraq itself or perhaps come from Hizbullah in Lebanon.
The charges are frankly ridiculous, and certainly are so if proportionality is taken into account. That is, if one bomb was sold by an Iranian arms dealer to the Taliban for profit, a hundred bombs were given to the Taliban by Pakistan for tactical reasons. Likewise, the Shiite militias in Iraq have killed very few American troops when the US troops have left the Shiites alone; most attacks on the US come from Sunni Arabs.
The Senate Kyl-Lieberman resolution helped legitimize this new Bush policy, which is why the senators should not have voted for it. It took us one more step down the road to war with Iran.
Labels: Iran
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/26/2007 12:30:00 AM
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9 Comments:
Not to mention that the US forces themselves have done a wonderful job of arming Iraqi and Kurdish insurgents - remind me again, how many weapons caches were not secured? How many Sunni tribesmen were armed by the US supposedly to fight al-Qaeda? How many US-issued rifles have gone missing, presumably sold on the blackmarket?
Iran warmonging is just a ploy by the Republicans-Neocons to divert the public attention in the next election which is running full steam now away from Iraq war. As the election near, Iran become the prime media spin, they will make Americans forget Iraq ever existed. We could see at some point in the election an aerial attack on some installation that will of course help the Republicans.
Prof. Cole,
I, too, was flabbergasted by the assertion that Iran the Quds force is helping the Taliban. It is documented that the Quds force fought alongside the Northern Alliance during the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, and that Iranian agents helped us identify bombing targets at the start of the war. The charge that they are now helping their old enemies is ludicrous and, of course, completely unchallenged by U.S. media.
The UN's deputy representative to Afghanistan shares Juan's analysis of just who is supporting the Taliban:
UN envoy doubts U.S. assertion Iran arming Afghan insurgents
September 23, 2007
//Asked whether the UN has seen any evidence of Iranian weaponry reaching the Taliban insurgency, Chris Alexander, the deputy United Nations representative to Kabul, told CanWest News Service in an interview: "None. It's the other border across which arms and weapons principally arrive."
Alexander was referring to Pakistan, ... //
This should come as no surprise, given that former NATO commander General James Jones, told the U.S. Senate's foreign relations committee that it is "generally accepted" that the Taliban is headquartered in or around the Pakistani city of Quetta.
British Lieutenant-General David Richards even claims to know the address!
Bush timed US sanctions on Iran just as AIPAC's "National Summit" gets under way in Philadelphia this weekend. Also Tom Lantos, Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, demanded that the Bush administration place sanctions on foreign companies that invest in Iran's energy sector. Lantos said: “I hope this latest action signals that the Administration will now begin at last to place sanctions on foreign companies that invest in Iran’s energy sector, as required by law, and support expansion of those sanctions. Refusal to do so is simply inexplicable.”
Lantos's press release refers to the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act (H.R. 1400) which the House passed by a vote of 397-16 last month. This bill removes the Executive Branch's authority under current law to waive sanctions on companies investing in Iran’s energy sector. It also includes language that requires the President should determine whether the IRGC should be designated as a "foreign terrorist organization", a designation already in federal law, and if not provide justification to the House and Senate Foreign Affairs committees. Therefore Bush can claim he's simply doing what House Democrats demanded.
Further the bill contains important provisions that take effect once Bush designates the IRCG a "terrorist organization". The bill says that then the administration may "block all property and interests in property of the following persons, to the same extent as property and interests in property of a foreign person determined to have committed acts of terrorism for purposes of Executive Order No. 13224."
This can include "all property and interests in property of foreign person who assists or provides financial, material, or technological support for, or financial or other services to or in support of, the IRGC or entities owned or effectively controlled by the IRGC." Effectively this bill means that almost all House Democrats are now publicly on the record as allowing Bush to take actions which will move the US toward a military confrontation with Iran.
Thanks for the comparison about US's reactions to Israel v/s Turkey. The 'arab street' as the media likes to call it, have seen US's double standard for 60 years. No US media has approached this issue, which is so obvious to anyone from the Middle East.
Carole
Juan,
I find two aspect of Bush administration charge against Iran interesting.
a) They say Iran is helping Hizbollah and Hammas. They were both democratically elected to power in elections that Bush administration supported.
b) It in interesting to chart the hot and calm spots in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe the map would show the areas furthest from Iranian border to be the real hot spot. The idea that Iranian weapons reaching that far, without being intercepted seems utterly absurd to me.
Any objective observer would agree with your skepticism regarding Iranian support for the resurgent Taliban. Iran has other ways of pressuring the US than supporting a group that is anathema to them on so many levels - political, religious, and even in other areas that may not immediately occur to us. Refugees and soaring opiate addiction are major domestic headaches for Tehran, which blames both on the Taliban.
The only qibble I have is the characterization of the Hazara as "Shiite clients of Iran". There is an obvious religious affinity between the two, but the Hazara are far from Iranian "clients" when one considers the significant differences in culture, language, ethnic identity, political opinion and aspirations. Many Hazara work in Iran, but the relationship generates considerable resentment on both sides.
Major sub-national ethnic groups like the Hazara in Afghanistan (and the Kurds in Iraq for that matter) are not easily pidgeonholed in terms of clientage. The Hazara pursue their own interests and seek to benefit simultaneously from both the United States and Iran. (This, coincidentally, mirrors Jalal Talabani's ability to benefit simultaneously by close relations with the US and Iran. Talabani is a "client" of both, or neither, depending on the particular issue of the day.)
When Ismail Khan was governor of Herat, he was much more of an Iranian client than the Hazara as a people are now - and he was/is far from a reliable proxy for Iranian interests.
When all the dust settles it looks like the only people that trust what CHENEYbush says about Iran are the congressional Democrats. The congressional Republicans don't count because they are a contiguous part of the CHENEYbush creature.
Maybe the only way to get the Democrats to man the barricades is to deny them campaign cash. When they send one of those envelopes to me I send it back empty with a "no money honey" note telling them that they'll get the dough as soons as they find their spine.
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