NPR’s Corey Flintoff interviewed Flynt at length for a story he published today, “Will China Help Sanction Iran’s Nuke Program?”; he also linked to our piece on this subject from April 13. Corey reports that, after President Obama’s bilateral meeting with Chinese President Hu, “White House national security aide Jeff Bader told reporters that the Chinese were ‘prepared to work with us’ and said the agreement was another sign of international unity against Iran.” Taking a critical look at this statement, Corey cites Flynt that the Chinese, in fact,
“are following a familiar playbook: although the Chinese have signed on to three previous sanctions resolutions, he says they have substantially delayed and weakened every one of them. The reason, Leverett says, is that sanctions could interfere with China’s own substantial investments in Iran, as well as an important source of oil…Leverett says Chinese diplomats are adept at drawing out the negotiations over proposed sanctions and removing any provisions that might have teeth. They have already expressed displeasure over a proposal to ban new investment in Iranian energy projects.”
For perspectives more sympathetic to the Obama Administration’s pursuit of new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, Corey brings in the Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sadjadpour, an ardent supporter of the Green movement whose predictions about Iranian politics over the past year have proven consistently wrong, and Brookings’ Suzanne Maloney. Defending the Administration’s approach, Karim says, “When countries like China and Russia are onboard, it prevents Iran from being able to frame this as a struggle between Islam and the West.” Karim also argues that, once the United Nations Security Council passes a sanctions resolution, the United States and its European partners can impose “more economically consequential” sanctions on their own: “In other words, UN sanctions are the starting point, not the finish line.” Suzanne, for her part, argues that, while it may be true that negotiations with China will produce a less rigorous set of sanctions against Iran than if Washington were working only with European partners, “a resolution that has the support of the world’s major powers is more important than the question of whether the sanctions have economic bite.”
While we are sure this was not the intention of either Karim or Suzanne, their remarks graphically underscore the utterly futile and ultimately counterproductive nature of the Obama Administration’s current policy course. Three previous sanctions resolutions against Iran have been passed by virtually unanimous votes in the Security Council—and with the five permanent members, including Russia and China, voting in favor of all three resolutions. (Russia and China voted for these resolutions after prolonged negotiations that went on much longer than the United States would have preferred, and after making sure that the texts which were ultimately adopted by the Council were heavily watered down from what the United States and its European partners had originally proposed.) The impact of those resolutions on Iranian decision-making was, essentially, nil.
Given this historical record, what is the basis for arguing that this time around, somehow, it will be different? In fact, if the Obama Administration succeeds in securing the adoption of a new sanctions resolution in coming months, it will not only be vastly watered down from what the Administration and its European partners originally proposed—it will also be passed by a more divided Council than was the case with the three previous sanctions resolutions. So what, exactly, is the point of this exercise?
On this point, Corey again cites Flynt that the Obama Administration does not have a serious strategy for dealing with Iran any more than the George W. Bush Administration did, and that the Obama team’s pursuit of sanctions is effectively a way to kill time:
“[It’s a way] to show various constituencies, at home and abroad, including Israel, that you’re being tough on Iran”, while fending off pressure, at home and abroad, to pursue more coercive approaches—including military confrontation and/or the overt embrace of regime change as the objective of U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic, coupled with material support for Iranian oppositionists.
This is, truly, a “dead end” policy. The way out, for the Obama Administration, is to get serious about nuclear diplomacy with Iran—first of all, by reaching agreement on plan for refueling the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR). As both the head of the Islamic Republic’s Atomic Energy Organization and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu have indicated within the past 24 hours, a deal on refueling the TRR is eminently reachable. We will take that up in greater detail in our next post.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
b,
You ask why the Obama administration seeks an arms embargo against Iran. I readily agree this is self-evident stupidity. If one is kind to Obama and his team. I’m afraid the reality may well be more dismaying, and that setting up an idiotic attack on Iran is the game-plan, and that to set up the attack the warmongers need to dupe the American public in the same way that the US public was bamboozled by the warmongers in 2002-2003.
The warmongers want to distract attention from the ongoing idiotic effort of Israel to keep much of the West Bank permanently – - no matter how badly this insane effort damages the national security interests of the American people.
Fiorangela,
The hundreds of billions of dollars the US borrows from Japan, China or other countries, every year, to squander on useless weapons etc etc, obviously is weakening the dollar. The spurious “prosperity” of the Bush years was based on an idiotic consumerism, built on debt. Phoney to the core.
I think someone on an earlier thread commented that the US dollar is still the hegemonic currency.
might be interested in this essay: http://www.antemedius.com/content/can-us-dollar-collapse-or-party-over
Jay,
I think it is a mistake to characterize Iranian policy as “calling the bluff” of the US. Iran obviously has the right to enrich uranium for use in the nuclear power plants. I agree with you that part of the strategy of the US is to demonize Iran at the same time Obama has said he wants to achieve better relations with Iran. Some of Obama’s Middle East policy makers like to bolster the objectives of the Israeli government of the day, even if this is not in the best interests of the American people. I put Dennis Ross into this very dangerous category. (Dangerous because Obama simply does not actually understand the Middle East, or its history and culture, well enough to avoid being bamboozled or manipulated.
Great piece. I continue to be morbidly fascinated by the refusal of the Obama administration even to discuss Turkey’s offer to serve as middleman for an exchange of Iranian LEU for the 20% U. This stupidity, of course, is forcing Iran to enrich to the 20% level needed for the medical research reactor.
Is the game plan, of the neocons and other warmongers, to force Iran to enrich to 20%, to facilitate their pursuit of a military attack on Iran? Is that why Obama has been so foolish as not to acknowledge Turkey’s offer publicly? And Japan made the same offer. Does Obama lack a sense of strategic thinking? Clearly, Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton have little or no ability to think strategically. Let’s remember that as #2 in the CIA in 1988, Gates thought the Soviets would double their troop levels in Afghanistan, and stay for years longer, when I knew the USSR was getting ready to pull out.
The objective of sanctions is manifold, but it is not “economic bite”!
Some of the objectives as pointed out already are:
a) continue the demonization propaganda against Iran — useful for preparing the public’s mind for any future action or revelation (mid to long term strategy),
b) continue the masquerade of “we are doing something” — useful for public consumption here and abroad (short to mid term tactical move),
c) continue to buy time to destabilize IRI through psychological/covert ops — useful for gaining leverage (short to mid term strategy)
d) continue the push to hold “the energy axe” over the head of Chinese — short to mid term strategy for containing China
and there is more…
The decision makers in the U.S., China, Russia, Iran, and the rest are an intelligent bunch — they all know what is in geopolitical strategy store. Everyone is engaged in a high stakes poker game and Sadjadpour and Maloney are irrelevant pawns (which, by the way, have been wrong far more often than right — particularly Sadjadpour!)
Unfortunately for us, the U.S. is being forced to play an amateur game of poker and Iranians continue to call the bluffs. I say unfortunately because: a) these games sometime take on their own momentum where rational risk taking devolves into irrational display of power and might, and b) we would not be playing it this way if it was not for the influence and pressure coming from certain quarters.
The real danger of this game is the creation of dynamics that drive the devolution toward conflict — in which case both sides will be losers! However, as much as Obama is a charismatic orator, he is not a bold thinker and decision maker. He remains trapped in his lack of initiative and imagination.
Germans, Italians, Canadians, Swedes — all travel frequently and freely to and in Iran. I saw the logos of many German and Italian companies on offices and storefronts in Tehran, Isfehan, Yazd, and Mashad. About two months ago when Angela Merkel engaged in talks with Israel to cut off German trade with Iran, German businessmen and commercial interests complained loudly that Merkel was harming the German economy.
In harming German interests vis a vis Iran at the behest of Israel, Merkel is following in the AIPAC-designed footprints of the US. We know this because an agent of AIPAC, Keith Weissman (also an accused spy for Israel on the US) said that:
1. he helped to write the executive order signed by Clinton that ripened into legislation imposing sanctions on US trade with Iran (The Iran-Libya sanctions/D’Amato amendment). (Incidentally, trade in caviar, pistachios and Persian rugs was excepted from sanctions, at AIPAC’s request: Israelis crave pistachios, caviar, and Persian rugs.)
2. according to Weissman, speaking at a conference in Seattle, Washington, in December, 2009, those acts required that CONOCO renounce a contract bid Iran had accepted by which CONOCO would develop Iranian oil fields. Loss of the contract deprived CONOCO of tens of millions of dollars of revenue (back when a million dollars meant something). Further, Weissman added, Khatami’s government had deliberately accepted a bid from a US company that was NOT the best deal Iran could have made, in a gesture to “extend a hand of friendship” to the US. (It was greeted with an American fist.) According to Robin Wright (in a talk at Wilson Center), the loss of that contract cost tens of thousands of American jobs.
3. The loss of the contract harmed American interests; it did not harm Iranian interests: they gave the work to companies from other nations. (United Jewish Federation in the US, and other Jewish groups, subsequently embarked on a campaign to force divestment of states’ teachers’ pension funds from Chinese and other foreign states’ companies that do business with Iran. California’s pension fund was one of the first and largest to respond to UJF pressure and to so divest. Today, California’s pension funds are nearly bankrupt today.
4. Weissman stated that the sanctions were ineffective, “a waste of energy.” He said that “unilateral sanctions have never been effective; multilateral sanctions were effective only in South Africa.”
The questions that were neither asked of Weissman nor answered: “Why did AIPAC do it? Cui bono?”
Shouldn’t Americans be informed that agents working for Israel
~forced legislation that was harmful to American interests,
~cost American jobs,
~harmed the diversified financial stability of pension funds upon which states’ teachers and civil servents relied,
~disrupted the potential for an alliance with a nation whose assistance Americans need in order to save the lives of their soldiers and
~extricate the American military and taxpayer from Iraq and Afghanistan?
What is Iran doing to the people of the United States that is the equivalent of what Israel’s agents have already done to the United States in the name of “punishing” Iran?
Liz,
“Iranian trading companies and businesses have been shifting their businesses away from Europe and North America over the last couple of years and this trend is rapidly gathering pace.”
In the end, this trend is what will either (1) bring the US government to its senses (with the help of some behind-the-scenes pressure from US companies who grow tired of missing opportunities, or the defection of some European governments whose companies are whispering in their ears more persuasively) or (2) leave Iran and its new economic partners (and thus political allies) in a solid position to ignore the US nonsense.
For the time being, though, it is important not to forget that, as recently as 2003, the same sort of nonsense had another name: US foreign policy in the Middle East. For that reason, I think Iran would be wise to find ways to slow down the (possible) march toward war in the US, little ways to cooperate (fuel swap deals; prisoner swaps; whatever) — long enough either to persuade the US that Iran is not evil after all or, failing that, long enough to keep the US hounds of war at bay until either they are clearly powerless here in the US or Iran is deeply enough involved with other powers (China, Russia and, as is often ignored, the rest of the world, which includes several other rising economic powers) that Iran no longer needs to fear their bark.
The odds are slim that the John Boltons of the world will persuade the US government to take military action agains Iran. But the consequences of that happening are great. Multiply those two percentages together, however, and you’ve got a risk worth heading off at the pass, using whatever few means you have at your disposal.
WaPo writes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/14/AR2010041404661.html
“The United States is pressing the U.N. Security Council to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Iran, allow foreign states to seize Iranian ships suspected of carrying materials linked to its nuclear program, and curtail Tehran’s ability to raise new investment in the country’s energy sector, according to U.N.-based diplomats familiar with the confidential text of the proposed resolution. ”
1. Arms embargo: Russia will of course not want this as Iran is a good customer. And what have arms to do with the NPT and Iran’s civil nuclear program?
2. Seize Iranian ships: What nonsense and totally illegal. I doubt China and Russia would support that.
3. Curtail energy investments: No doubt how China feels about that.
Why are they even trying this nonsense?
The policies being pursued by the Americans and the Europeans have already done permanent damage to their interests in Iran and the Persian Gulf region. Iranian trading companies and businesses have been shifting their businesses away from Europe and North America over the last couple of years and this trend is rapidly gathering pace. Almost everything that Iran has traditionally purchased from western countries, can now be found at a cheaper price in Asia or even Latin and south America. It has also created the incentive for Iran to produce some of the more high technology equipment and hardware that it needs.
This has caused Iranian to grow more independent in some areas such as the nuclear industry and for its trade to increase significantly with US rivals, thus making Iran more and more important for countries like China and India among others. It has also caused western countries to lose leverage in the country at a time when the US seems to need Iran more than before.
Another point is that the threat of further sanctions and Obama’s nuclear threats only serve to increase hostility towards the US, UK, France, and Germany among ordinary Iranians and it unifies the country even further. Iranians will also be expecting the government to punish those countries that wish to hurt the Iranian people. By just looking at the map, it’s not difficult to imagine how this can be done.
So who wins?
“Defending the Administration’s approach, Karim [Sadjadpour] says, ‘When countries like China and Russia are on board, it prevents Iran from being able to frame this as a struggle between Islam and the West.” …[O]nce the United Nations Security Council passes a sanctions resolution, the United States and its European partners can impose “more economically consequential” sanctions on their own.’”
Setting aside the obvious but big-picture unimportant question of just how “economically consequential” are sanctions on selling widgets that everyone but “the United States and its European partners” is entirely free to ignore, this strikes me as an argument that merits more attention than Flynt and Hillary have given it here. If, as Fiorangela has argued, the real purpose of sanctions is to lay a “goodness knows we’ve tried everything else” basis for a military strike, does it matter that Iran’s cost of frazistans is merely increased by 7.3% by a watered-down UN sanction? All that really matters is that the American “man-in-the-street” is left with some vague but unshakeable belief that Iran has spit in the face – not only of the US, which is bad enough – but also of China, Russia and just about everyone else in the world. Exactly the sort of groundwork one needs to ram a resolution through Congress to ratchet up the pressure on Iran to the point of a military strike if Obama happens to wake up on the wrong side of bed one morning. While many of us may be confident that Obama never will wake up on the wrong side of bed, the existence of such authority practically compels a President to exercise it sooner or later, at the risk of being deemed a “wimp” for not doing so. Wimps rarely get elected (even re-elected) President of the United States. Just ask Michael Dukakis — aka “Rocky the Flying Squirrel,” for those who recall his Army-tank pose during the 1988 campaign, a photo of which cost him 6-8 points in the polls overnight. If Dukakis doesn’t answer his phone when you call, try George McGovern or Jimmy Carter. Also not home? Maybe give Walter Mondale a call, or John Kerry if Walt doesn’t answer.
In short, if the objective of sanctions is to inflict economic pain on Iran, then, as the Leveretts note, they have failed so far, and one accordingly must question the mental capacity of those who press for more of the same. But one should not leap so quickly to the conclusion that those people are stupid. If the objective of more sanctions is instead to lay yet more solid groundwork for a military strike, maybe those sanction-mongers aren’t so stupid after all.
No American would wish for the current recession to last any longer than it has to. Nonetheless, its persistence does have one benefit: it removes one ingredient – economic strength – from the recipe for yet another foreign adventure for US bomber pilots. If the US economy soon recovers, as recent reports suggest may be the case, that missing ingredient might not be missing much longer.
Economic stability, slightly faded memories of the debacle in Iraq, an illegitimate Holocaust-denying regime thumbing its nose at the world – what more will we need?