This week saw the furthering of draconian legislation against Iran that may end up benefiting U.S. adversaries more than hurting Iran’s government. On Wednesday the House of Representatives passed the Iran Threat Reductions Act (H.R. 1905) and President Obama is expected to sign into law sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank (Bank Markazi) as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. H.R. 1905 includes measures that effectively bar U.S. officials from speaking to Iranian officials with some exceptions. While quoting an exchange between State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland and Matthew Lee of the Associated Press, Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin said Lee was essentially “pressing Nuland to admit that the administration is being bullied into accepting Iran sanctions law it doesn’t want”. Philip Weiss accordingly informs us that the main pusher of harsh Iran measures in congress are elements of the “Israel Lobby”:
AIPAC led the charge. AIPAC rolled the amendment out 3 weeks ago, and then led a letter-writing campaign to US Senators on the amendment, known as Kirk-Menendez (in part for the Senator from AIPAC, Mark Kirk of Illinois).
The National Iranian American Council, which advocates a mixture of diplomacy and targeted measures against Iran’s government, issued a strong statement against what it considers to be counter-productive legislation. According to policy director, Jamal Abdi:
These measures will not achieve anything but punish ordinary people, raise gas prices, and bring the U.S. and Iran closer to war…It will continue to squeeze Iranians and Iranian Americans from both sides, between the repression of the Iranian regime and the reckless sanctions policies of the United States.
Abdi wrote today that Obama’s initial resistance to the measures proved too weak against lobbying that’s targeting his upcoming presidential campaign:
But the administration’s public pushback also played into a political narrative being advanced by neoconservative groups like the American Enterprise Institute and the Emergency Committee to Save Israel, who say Obama is unwilling to confront Iran and is not a “true friend” of Israel. Ahead of a re-election in which Obama has few national security and foreign policy liabilities, it is an attack that the Obama campaign may fear is sticking. It may be no coincidence that the sanctions the president is being pressured to take in order to disprove this perception are ones that could raise gas prices in the US, and drive Europe and the global economy into recession. It is the economy, not foreign policy, where President Obama is most vulnerable.
USA*Engage, a broad coalition of businesses and trade associations, also issued a statement opposing the Iran Threat Reductions Act, arguing that it would work against the administration’s efforts to build an effective multilateral coalition on Iran:
…The H.R. 1905 vote and others like it only send mixed signals to those nations that have joined with the United States to press Iran to change course. Votes like these may satisfy domestic political considerations, but they actually weaken American leadership and have the potential to unravel the calibrated, multilateral consensus that has been achieved.
Nuland said Thursday that the administration was studying how to apply sanctions targeting Iran’s Central Bank “while causing minimum disruption for friends and allies of the U.S.” This begs the question of how that’s possible when enforcement requires U.S. punishment of foreign banks that do business with Bank Markazi. While Asian allies are scrambling for ways to cope with the U.S.-led initiatives, China and Russia are reportedly looking forward to exploiting them for their own benefit. (Meanwhile China and Iran are gaining in Iraq.)
Fears have long been raised about the economic repercussions of targeting Iran’s Central Bank and its oil exports. Iran could respond by blockading the world’s most important oil-shipping route, the Strait of Hormuz. Yesterday a discussion on National Public Radio also highlighted how Iran could actually gain from higher oil prices caused by a reduction in global supply:
“There is absolutely a risk that in fact the price of oil would go up, which would mean that Iran would in fact have more money to fuel its nuclear ambitions, not less,” Wendy Sherman, a State Department undersecretary, testified before a Senate committee earlier this month.
Saudi Arabia is a key player in preventing that consequence and they still haven’t commented on an Iranian claim that the Saudis would not boost production to offset the effect of decreased Iranian exports. Despite tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia that have dominated headlines, the countries held talks in Riyadh this week. Motivated by self-interest, Saudi Arabia also reportedly aligned with Iran in October by cutting oil output by 4% so prices didn’t fall below $100 a barrel.
Time will tell how the Saudis act this time, but so far Iran says it’s “not concerned“, Obama continues to be criticized by neoconservatives despite submitting to their pressure, and China and Russia seem to be basking in their good fortune. The only groups applauding the moves are hawkish organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, United Against Nuclear Iran and Israel, which on Sunday renewed calls for “paralyzing” sanctions on Iran.
Is anyone else scratching their head?
]]>The idea of sanctioning Iran’s central bank has been touted among U.S. lawmakers since 2008 and was most recently floated in paper form among legislators in August in a letter co-sponsored by Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.).
Last week David Cohen, the Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs that
- Further U.S. action against CBI, if it engenders multilateral support, could further isolate the CBI. I can assure the Committee that the Administration will continue to carefully weigh the legal bases and policy ramifications of further action against the CBI, and we are committed to continuing to work with the Congress on this crucially important issue.
While claiming that the case against the Iranian government was “dead bang,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein also expressed support for the bid during an interview on “Fox News Sunday” this past weekend.
- Dianne Feinstein: I don’t think the sanctions have been as complete as they should be. I wish they had sanctioned the central bank of Iran and that would affect oil and maybe that’s why they didn’t do it, but that makes a big difference.
Chris Wallace: Is that what you would like to see now?
Dianne Feinstein: Yes.
Feinstein was one of more than 90 senators who signed the letter circulated by Kirk and Schumer in August.
]]>The decision of more than 90 U.S. senators to press President Obama for Iraq-style sanctions on Iran flew in the face of what some observers warned could be the beginning of a stress test of the international support for pressuring Iran and another step [...]]]>
The decision of more than 90 U.S. senators to press President Obama for Iraq-style sanctions on Iran flew in the face of what some observers warned could be the beginning of a stress test of the international support for pressuring Iran and another step closer to a potential war with the Islamic Republic.
But a Tuesday press release [PDF] from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) brings to mind eery parallels between the escalation of sanctions against Iran and the slow lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The press release read:
AIPAC applauds today’s bipartisan letter—signed by 92 U.S. Senators—to the administration urging it to sanction the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), or Bank Markazi. The letter, spearheaded by Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), notes that the CBI lies at the center of Iran’s strategy to circumvent international sanctions against its illicit nuclear program.
Sanctioning Bank Markazi might, as mentioned by the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon, be interpreted as an act of war. But that doesn’t seem to bother AIPAC. Indeed, they’ve been down this sanctions road once before before the invasion of Iraq.
In June, Robert Dreyfuss interviewed former AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman who offered details of how AIPAC and its allies in the Bush administration pushed the allegation that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Qaeda. More importantly, Weissman discusses AIPAC’s plans for ultimately bringing regime change in Iran. Dreyfuss writes:
Weissman says that Iran was alarmed at the possibility that the United States might engage in overt and covert efforts to instigate opposition inside Iran. He says that many in AIPAC, especially among its lay leadership and biggest donors, strongly backed regime change in Iran. “That was what Larry [Franklin] and his friends wanted,” he says. “It included lots of different parts, like broadcasts, giving money to groups that would conduct sabotage, it included bringing the Mojahedin[-e Khalgh], bringing them out of Iraq and letting them go back to Iran to carry out missions for the United States. Harold Rhode backed this…. There were all these guys, Michael Ledeen, ‘Next stop Tehran, next stop Damascus.’“
Indeed, as shown in the AIPAC press release, Iran is now the target of similar sanctions and bellicose rhetoric similar to those that targeted Iraq in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Sanctioning Iran’s central bank and imposing a de facto oil embargo on Iranian oil exports would appear to be pages torn from the playbook before the invasion of Iraq.
If the current evidence that AIPAC is supporting an oil embargo isn’t convincing, consider Weissman’s comments on the oil industry’s support of AIPAC, and a boycott of Iranian oil, in the late 1990s:
Even Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, and Adel al-Jubeir — then the Saudi embassy spokesman and currently the ambassador — welcomed AIPAC’s work in helping to support the BTC pipeline and isolating Iran, its Persian Gulf rival, economically. Remembers Weissman:
“Prince Bandar used to send us messages. I used to meet with Adel al-Jubeir a couple times a year. Adel used to joke that if we could force an American embargo on Iranian oil, he’d buy us all Mercedes! Because Saudi [Arabia] would have had the excess capacity to make up for Iran at that time.”
It would appear that AIPAC is now using the same escalating measures against Iran that were used before the invasion of Iraq.
]]>The announcement that 90 U.S. senators signed a letter to President Obama urging him to sanction Iran’s central bank has been described by some American officials, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon, as the “nuclear option” or, in the eyes of some Iranian officials, [...]]]>
The announcement that 90 U.S. senators signed a letter to President Obama urging him to sanction Iran’s central bank has been described by some American officials, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon, as the “nuclear option” or, in the eyes of some Iranian officials, an act of war. But that hasn’t stopped some of Washington’s most outspoken Iran hawks from applauding potential legislation aimed at freezing Iran out of the global financial system.
The letter, cosponsored by Sens. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), calls for blacklisting Bank Markazi, Iran’s central bank, and observes that, “If our allies are willing to join, we believe this step can be even more effective.”
But even advocates of ever tighter sanctions, like the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘ Mark Dubowitz, admit that getting U.S. allies to join in this extreme move will be difficult. Rubin quips: “The hang-up — no surprise — is that there is no — you got it! — international consensus.”
Rubin goes on to consult with Dubowitz who tells her:
When it comes to implementing tough measures to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, there is no longer a “third rail” that should prevent us from trying any measure to squeeze the regime. The Obama administration must target Iran’s crude oil sales, designate the Central Bank of Iran, and sanction the Chinese, Indian and other companies that continue to do business in Iran’s energy sector. We don’t have time for half measures and slow, incremental changes.
Rubin and Dubowitz now warn that Iraq-like sanctions — those that caused infant mortality to increase more than three-fold in seven years — are the only way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and avoiding a military confrontation, but just last week they were declaring the sanctions strategy dead. Dubowitz, quoted by Rubin, said on Thursday:
[The Iranians] are driving ruthlessly forward on their nuclear weapon program while we delude ourselves into thinking that sanctions are a silver bullet that will stop them. Sanctions are an important part of a comprehensive Iran policy that needs to include the real threat of force. Sanctions are an important part of a comprehensive Iran policy that needs to include the real threat of force.
The push for a risky, de facto oil embargo has been floated for the past few months but back in April, Dubowitz admitted that such extreme sanctions could have disastrous effects. Speaking on a Heritage Foundation panel, he said:
We’re playing very delicately with a very sensitive oil market and we have to be very careful not to shoot ourselves in the face by going after Iranian crude through an embargo or through the Iran crude oil sanctions act which sends a message to the markets that we’re going to take a million barrels of crude off line next week.
In June, the Atlantic Council’s Barbara Slavin told Think Progress that legislators pushing for ever tighter sanctions should be careful not to make the same mistakes the U.S. made with Iraq, an ineffective sanctions scheme which exacted a massive humanitarian toll. She said:
What they want is a stealth embargo. And they want it to be slow and quiet so it doesn’t cause shocks to the market, but that’s what they want.
If it starts to look like a total embargo, they will lose support. It starts to look like Iraq.
It’s worth remembering that while these calls for extreme sanctions against Iran are posited as a way to avoid military confrontation, the same coterie of neoconservative hawks never let up calling for military action against Iraq despite the draconian sanctions put in place.
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