Cole in Salon: Bashing Ahmadinejad
My column is out at Salon.com:
"Obama goes over the top in bashing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:"
Once again, U.S. politicians, including both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, pile on the Iranian president. Why does Larry King (!) sound like the adult in the room?
excerpt:
'As for the imposition of economic sanctions on Iran, it might be worth considering for a moment whether the U.S., with its faltering economy, is even able to cause a major oil exporter such as Iran much harm through a unilateral boycott. The law passed by Congress at the insistence of the Israel lobby, placing sanctions on firms doing business in Iran, does not punish those who merely distribute or import Iranian petroleum. Does Obama want to go even further with sanctions? If Congress really could close down Iran's production of 4 million barrels a day, it would cause the price of petroleum to soar and throw the U.S. into a deep recession or depression. From the point of view of a reality-based foreign policy, this sort of step is known as "cutting off your nose to spite your face." Russia and China are now balking at placing any further sanctions on Iran via the United Nations Security Council. (Russia is not exactly in a cooperative mood after the drubbing it took from U.S. politicians over its intervention to protect South Ossetia from Georgia.)
The sanctions have in any case had no effect on Iranian policy, though they are keeping Iran's gas fields from being developed by American and European firms, a task that may fall to Russia's Gazprom or its Chinese counterpart instead. (One would not advise a President Obama to threaten to cut off economic cooperation with China over its Iran investments, given how much U.S. debt Beijing holds.) Since natural gas is a global market, this boycott of Iran harms American consumers twice, causing the price of gas to be higher than necessary and making sure that the development of Iranian gas creates no jobs for Americans and brings no profits into this country. '
Read the whole thing.
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/24/2008 04:24:00 PM
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5 Comments:
I think you're missing the point. The pro-Israeli lobbyists who push for these sanctions don't care if they hurt the US economy and are ineffective on Iran. Instead their point is merely to create yet more obstacles in the way of any potential US-Iran rapprochement -- something they see as contrary to Israeli interests and ambitions.
And they'll fight to the last American to prevent that.
Incidentally, Iran has allowed surprise inspections of its nuclear program -- the last report said there were 17 and the one before said 14 surprise inspections.
And Iran has allowed more inspections than it legally is obligated to permit too -- the inspections at Parchin for example.
No amount of inspections will suffice because the US charges Iran with "intending to develop the capacity" of making nukes. The IAEA cannot inspection "intentions" to develop "capacities" to do something in the indefinite future.
Good analysis.
Fails to menton that Israel allows no inspections of its nuclear facilities, and imprisoned a man who did mention them.
Israel refuses to join in non-proliferation.
And USA goes on providing nuclear weaponry technology to Israel, including missile technology and even submarine missiles.
Thank you Dr. Cole for balance; it is something we have come to expect from people outside the media, such as yourself, because the media has refused to do the job.
I think the issue that is so often missing from the discussion of possible Iranian nuclear armament is its own political and geographic situation. It is pretty isolated in the region it resides in as a minority state. It needs a certain level of independence.
The hyped comments of President Ahmedinajad may be termed quite raucous. Yet, he lacks any real power to constitute a threat as a figure head in his government.
Finally, an ideological war is also being fought around this nation. It faces instability on its borders with Iraq, Afghanistan, and nuclear armed Pakistan.
The comments of President Ahmedinajad have allowed the Iranian situation to be removed its own geopolitical context, to make it a part of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It confuses many issues of the Iranian pursuit of nuclear power, and even possible nuclear weapons. (Whether they are pursuing it or not, it makes sense as a deterrent in the event of a stand off with Pakistan). The losers of this move from honestly evaluating and discussion the Iranian situation, and meshing it with that of the ME conflict, are the Iranian people. Because their realities are being subsumed to the worries of a tertiary nation.
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