Only 1% of the world stood by US-Israeli rejection of President Mahmoud Abbas’ request for non-member state status, which puts Palestine on par with the Vatican and allows Palestinian claims to be filed in the International Criminal Court. Lobe Log’s Mitchell Plitnick reported at the time on the politics [...]]]>
Only 1% of the world stood by US-Israeli rejection of President Mahmoud Abbas’ request for non-member state status, which puts Palestine on par with the Vatican and allows Palestinian claims to be filed in the International Criminal Court. Lobe Log’s Mitchell Plitnick reported at the time on the politics behind the resolution and Israel’s strategy (featured in the London Review of Books) and on the Israel lobby’s response in the US. But the path to Palestinian statehood (if it’s not destroyed beyond repair) will be a long and bumpy one, especially if the recent Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas fails to hold. So where to go from here? Al Jazeera English chief political analyst Marwan Bishara discusses with Peter Beinart, Ethan Bronner, Tony Karon, and Rashid Khalidi.
]]>Former Iran-desk State Department staffer Reza Marashi and journalist Sahar Namazikhah remind us that Iran’s influnetial Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has publicly recognized the benefits of negotiating with the US to avert a military conflict through a report that’s available on their website. “To that end, the Intelligence Ministry [...]]]>
Former Iran-desk State Department staffer Reza Marashi and journalist Sahar Namazikhah remind us that Iran’s influnetial Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has publicly recognized the benefits of negotiating with the US to avert a military conflict through a report that’s available on their website. “To that end, the Intelligence Ministry can play a role in planting ideas within the minds of Iran’s top decision-makers,” write Marashi and Namazikhah, adding that the MOIS report directly “articulates why President Obama is different than Israel”:
The primary obstacle? According to the MOIS, it is Israel – but not for the reasons many might assume. Rather than ideology, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry sees geopolitics as the driving force: “[Israel is concerned that] the balance of power in the region will be against the Zionist regime” and it therefore “considers enrichment a threat to its national security and wants to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities”.
The way that Iran’s Intelligence Ministry distinguishes between Obama and Israel is important. As a key source of information in the Iranian system, the MOIS has said that Obama shows he is not willing to rush into war – and it has given him de facto credit for it. To that end, policymakers in Washington should carefully study this publication as a potential opening from Iran.
Gary Sick, an acute observer of US-Iranian relations for more than three decades who served on the National Security Council staff under president Ford, Carter and Reagan, meanwhile argues that the path to middle east peace goes through Tehran. But even if conditions are ripe for a serious attempt at reaching a deal — which President Obama seems interested in – both sides will need to make concessions:
The United States and its allies will have to accept a measure of Iranian domestic enrichment of uranium. Iran will have to accept limits on its entire nuclear infrastructure, subject to intrusive inspections and monitoring. Iran will need to document the history of its nuclear program, and the West will need to remove sanctions. All of this must happen in a step-by-step process with safeguards and verifications at each stage.
Writing in Al-Monitor, Banafsheh Keynoush argues that Iran’s hardliners are ready to engage, but won’t submit without serious incentives. Indeed, as Iran scholar Farideh Farhi points out, the key to moving the diplomatic process forward and avoiding a military conflict is flexibility on both sides:
]]>Unless Khamenei and company are given a way out of the mess they have taken Iran into (with some help from the US and company), chances are that we are heading into a war in the same way we headed to war in Iraq. A recent Foreign Affairs article by Ralf Ekeus, the former executive chairman of the UN special Commission on Iraq, and Malfrid-Braut hegghammer, is a good primer on how this could happen.
The reality is that the current sanctions regime does not constitute a stable situation. First, the instability (and instability is different from regime change as we are sadly learning in Syria) it might beget is a constant force for policy re-evaluation on all sides (other members of the P5+1 included). Second, maintaining sanctions require vigilance while egging on the sanctioned regime to become more risk-taking in trying to get around them. This is a formula for war and it will happen if a real effort at compromise is not made. Inflexibility will beget inflexibility.
The US-led sanctions regime isn’t directly targeting Iran’s healthcare system but reports continue to suggest that critically-ill Iranians are being affected. The Al Jazeera English clip above squares with Najmeh Bozorgmehr’s Financial Times article from September about how sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank are preventing critically-ill patients from getting crucial medical aid:
[...]]]>The US-led sanctions regime isn’t directly targeting Iran’s healthcare system but reports continue to suggest that critically-ill Iranians are being affected. The Al Jazeera English clip above squares with Najmeh Bozorgmehr’s Financial Times article from September about how sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank are preventing critically-ill patients from getting crucial medical aid:
The government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says international sanctions have had little impact on the country and insists that its nuclear program should continue. It has launched a public relations campaign stressing that 97 percent of Iran’s medicine is produced domestically — a clear attempt to prevent panic that medical supplies could be at risk.
However, Ahmad Ghavidel, head of the Iranian Hemophilia Society, a nongovernmental organization that assists about 8,000 patients, says access to medicine has become increasingly limited and claims one young man recently died in southern Iran after an accident when the blood-clotting injection he needed was not available.
“This is a blatant hostage-taking of the most vulnerable people by countries which claim they care about human rights,” Ghavidel said. “Even a few days of delay can have serious consequences like hemorrhage and disability.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in October that sanctions are affecting the supply of humanitarian essentials for Iranians regardless of special waivers:
“The sanctions also appear to be affecting humanitarian operations in the country,” Ban wrote in the report, dated August 22, to the 193-member General Assembly on the “Situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“Even companies that have obtained the requisite license to import food and medicine are facing difficulties in finding third-country banks to process the transactions,” he said.
US officials are apparently aware of these scathing reports, which bring back memories of the catastrophic effects that their past sanctions regime had on Iraqi civilians. Samuel Cutler and Erich Ferrari write in Al-Monitor that the Treasury Department has quietly rewritten regulations governing key aspects of the sanctions and now permit “US companies to sell certain medicines and basic medical supplies to Iran without first seeking a license from OFAC”. However, the authors add that it’s “difficult to predict exactly what effect the new authorization will have on the humanitarian situation in Iran”.
Iran’s healthcare system isn’t the only unintended victim of the sanctions’ crippling effect. Even independent Iranian publishers, which are already under the heavy hand of the Islamic Republic, are being hit.
This summer, Iran scholar Farideh Farhi also informed us about a report by the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) detailing the negative impact of sanctions on ordinary Iranians. Farhi’s article provides useful context and analysis for Bozorgmehr’s piece:
]]>If ICAN’s analysis is accurate, it also foretells harsher economic realities for the most vulnerable elements of Iran’s population, a harsher political environment for those agitating for change, and a more hostile setting for those who have tried to maintain historical links between Western societies and Iranian society.
Sanctions impact calculations, but usually not in the intended fashion.
Right now, of course, it is Egypt’s moment. Many people’s elation over the [...]]]>
Right now, of course, it is Egypt’s moment. Many people’s elation over the past ten days has given way to guarded optimism that a relatively peaceful transition to a new government can be made. This will likely be a volatile, months-long process — at least — and the implications will be wide-ranging. We’ll, of course, be covering all of it, or as much of it as we can.
For good things to check out elsewhere, there are far too many places to list comprehensively. For starters, I’d point to Inter Press Service, the wire that hosts this blog. On the homepage, you’ll find articles by a host of correspondents on the ground in Egypt and all over the world, including LobeLog contributors like Emad Mekay, the IPS correspondent in Cairo who has been filing dispatches for us here (some by phone).
Listing other sources of news and analysis would take too much time, so I’ll just say you can follow us on Twitter (@LobeLog), where you can keep track of what I’m reading and, sometimes, thinking. Of course, I am still glued to Al Jazeera English. Other than that, I’ve been dashing off thoughts on Egypt and its ripples on my personal blog and occasionally on Mondoweiss.
The latter has been a damned good source of info on all things related to Egypt’s aftershocks in both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, perhaps more importantly to those of us who live here, the discourse in the U.S. If the U.S.’s strategic m.o. in the region is not under serious review, then, Houston, we have a problem.
Some rumblings of change have become perfectly clear from closely watching U.S. neoconservatives. The movement is split among itself, and cracks are forming between them and their usual allies in Israel’s Likud party. All about Earthquake Egypt.
But the movement remains strong and, most curiously, focused on Iran. This they still share with Israel’s Likud prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu. The general just appointed as IDF chief-of-staff has asserted Israel’s “moral right to act [against Iran]” and focused on the Iranian threat. Blogger Noam Sheizaf doesn’t know if the general falls in the attack camp or the “skeptics” camp; it’s “unclear.”
On the other hand, where neocons in the U.S. come down on Iran seems very clear. As Egypt unfolds all around them, they are out hawking “Iranium.”
Much more to come, I’m sure. And, of course, my vacation doesn’t mean that you won’t be getting Eli’s usual great reporting and analysis, as well as that of our long list of guest contributors.
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