Just a week after an Iranian plan crashed, killing scores, which was quite possibly caused by the deterioration of Iranian commercial planes due to sanctions restricting spare parts, the U.S. is speaking about the right of every country to have access to energy. This comes while Congress and the Obama administration have put into place sanctions that specifically target Iranian access to refined gas. Do you see the irony?
Here’s State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley — who has more or less said in the past that the sanctions packages are a means to put pressure on Iranians as a collective, not just the leadership — responding to a question at a daily briefing in Washington:
QUESTION: Some kind of economic tension is brewing up between Afghanistan and Iran. Iran has blocked the supply of gas to Afghanistan, which has led to increasing gas prices and shortages of gas in Afghanistan. What do you have to say about that – on that?
MR. CROWLEY: I mean, we are watching closely that development. Energy is a critical resource to any country and any economy, and it should be available at whatever the appropriate market price is.
Want to qualify that statement now to say that gas should only be available to those countries that the U.S. believes deserve it?
]]>But one thing that is well known is that, generally speaking, Iranian commercial passenger airliners are in [...]]]>
But one thing that is well known is that, generally speaking, Iranian commercial passenger airliners are in disrepair. (Reuters has a timeline of Iranian airplane crashes since early 2000.) One possible cause: sanctions. Iran is banned from acquiring parts and maintenance for its fleet of planes that carry nothing more than civilians.
The Washington Post provides some context at the bottom of its wire service article on the latest crash:
Iran has a history of frequent air accidents blamed on its aging aircraft and poor maintenance. IranAir’s fleet includes Boeing and Airbus aircraft, many of them bought before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to a cutoff in ties between the two nations.
Iranian airlines, including those run by the state, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say. U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the Soviet Union’s fall.
State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley basically admitted last fall that a shift had occurred wherein U.S. sanctions were no longer seeking to assiduously focus pressure on certain figures associated with Iran’s leadership. In other words, innocent Iranians — ‘Jamshid Averages’ — were now on the hook for the behavior of their government.
One may wonder whether this plane full of Iranians was dangling precariously from that hook before it broke in mid-air and fell to the ground.
]]>