The US and EU are touting Iran’s currency woes as proof that sanctions are working, though it’s not clear to what end. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Western powers “are working on new coordinated measures intended to accelerate the recent plunge of Iran’s currency and drain its foreign-exchange reserves”:
The first [...]]]>
The US and EU are touting Iran’s currency woes as proof that sanctions are working, though it’s not clear to what end. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Western powers “are working on new coordinated measures intended to accelerate the recent plunge of Iran’s currency and drain its foreign-exchange reserves”:
The first salvos in this stepped-up sanctions campaign are expected at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Oct. 15, including a ban on Iranian natural-gas exports and tighter restrictions on transactions with Tehran’s central bank, European officials said.
The U.S. and EU are also considering imposing a de facto trade embargo early next year by moving to block all export and import transactions through Iran’s banking system ….
To that end, U.S. lawmakers are drafting legislation that would require the White House to block all international dealings with Iran’s central bank, while also seeking to enforce a ban on all outside insuring of Iranian companies.
David Cohen, who coordinates the US’s Iran sanctions policy from within the Treasury, outlined the US’s stance in a speech before a British think tank. Reuters reports:
[David] Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, added in remarks on a visit to Britain’s Chatham House think-tank that Iran had the ability to “relieve the pressure its people are feeling” by resolving concerns over its nuclear work.
“What in particular has sparked the most recent precipitous decline in the rial, I’m not in a position to say on a granular basis,” he said, adding however that over the past year it had fallen substantially.
The Washington Post also reported that EU officials are “even more blunt” over the intentions behind the sanctions:
One senior European official said the goal of the tightened sanctions was to “bring the Iranian economy to its knees,” and to “make it in a way that really hurts the regime more than the population. That is very difficult.”
But US officials are also attempting to downplay the negative effects of the sanctions by blaming the regime. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said yesterday that “[t]he Iranian state has horribly mismanaged all aspects of their internal situation.” Cohen told the Chatham House audience that the unrest in Iran “is undoubtedly in significant part due to the Iranian government’s own mismanagement of its economy and it is in part due to the effect of sanctions. The Iranian leadership has within its capacity the ability to relieve the pressure its people are feeling.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered the following qualifier:
“They have made their own government decisions– having nothing to do with the sanctions– that have had an impact on the economic conditions inside of the country,”" Mrs. Clinton said. “Of course, the sanctions have had an impact as well, but those could be remedied in short order if the Iranian government were willing to work with. . .the international community in a sincere manner.”
Meanwhile the hawkish advocacy group United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) is urging the US to increase sanctions to leverage the resulting unrest towards regime change:
The Obama administration, the European Union and others should impose an economic blockade on the Iranian regime. The regime is beginning to experience social and political unrest at an 80% devaluation of its currency, and significantly further devaluation will force Tehran to choose between having a nuclear weapon or a functioning economy. A blockade would even bring about the possibility of the failure of this illicit regime.
An economic blockade would mean that any business, firm, or entity that does work in Iran would be barred from receiving U.S. government contracts, accessing U.S. capital markets, entering into commercial partnerships with U.S. entities, or otherwise doing business in the U.S. or with U.S. entities. It is time for the U.S. and others to use all available economic leverage against the regime.
According to EU officials, this is the position Congress is now mulling over, since Iran is still able to move its energy exports on East Asian markets like South Korea’s:
“You could see a move for a total embargo,” said a senior European official involved in the sanctions debate. “This could fall in line with what Congress is thinking.”
There are two ways [...]]]>
There are two ways to look at red lines. One is, “should we make a public announcement than can be used by Israel or any country as its justification for going to war?” That we cannot do.
No. We cannot subcontract the right to go to war. That is an American decision.
Kissinger also merged Washington’s previously stated red line, an Iranian nuclear weapon, with Israel’s red line, nuclear capability, when arguing that the White House needs to decide what preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon boils down to:
Now, we do need to define for ourselves when we say that nuclear weapons are unacceptable — nuclear weapons capability is unacceptable — we need to know for ourselves what we mean by that. What is the definition?
I would say private red line, publicly decided in terms of tactical necessity.
Kissinger concluded by endorsing Mitt Romney’s “responsible foreign policy.”
On Iran, Mitt Romney told ABC that his “redlines” are essentially the same as Obama’s. But he subsequently changed his position on the subject when pressed by pro-Israel advocates in a private campaign forum, the Cable reports. It’s now unclear which position he and his foreign policy advisors agree on.
]]>- The Washington Post: In an editorial, WaPo’s Jackson Diehl writes the Obama administration’s foreign policy strategy is marked by public and highly choreographed “process” and timelines. On Iran, Diehl points to the administration’s statement last spring that Iran was two to five years away from producing a bomb. Whether the sanctions approach will be successful is still unclear, says Diehl, but it has set a clock ticking. The scheduled drawdown of troops in Afghanistan by July 2011, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ goal of creating a “framework agreement” by next September, and the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, all are on timelines and will be put to a test before the 2012 presidential election. He concludes, “Process is always important to good policy — and yes, the Bush administration sometimes demonstrated what can go wrong when there are no deadlines. Yet in the Obama administration, the timetable is becoming an end in itself. It reflects a president who is fixed on disposing of foreign policy problems — and not so much on solving them.”
- The New York Times: In his oped, Roger Cohen reflects on his breakfast with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and concludes that he is ultimately, “odious” but not dangerous. Cohen points out that hyping the threat of Ahmadinejad has become a U.S. and Israeli pastime, with estimates for when Iran will acquire an atomic bomb ranging from 1999 to 2014. “There is a dangerous pattern here of Israeli and U.S. alarmism,” he writes. Iran is a “paper tiger,” says Cohen. “One of the things there’s time for, if you’re not playing games with the Iran specter, is a serious push for an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough that would further undermine the Iranian president.”
- The Daily Beast: Reza Aslan writes that Farsi1, a Farsi-language satellite station broadcasting in Iran, is among the most popular in the banned-but-tolerated Iranian satellite TV market. But Farsi1 is partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewCorp, which operates a slew of right wing American outlets like the New York Post and Fox News Network. Several officials in the Islamic Republic have denounced it as a tool of the West’s war with Iran, as they have done with BBC Persian and Voice Of America (which are operated by the British and U.S. governments, respectively). “Part of why the government is so wary about these satellite programs is that they are usually filled with overt political propaganda against the Iranian regime (this includes BBC and Voice of America),” writes Aslan. “But what controversy exists about Farsi1 is focused on the main man behind the project, Rupert Murdoch,”whose Fox News has fed “anti-Islam hysteria.”
- The Washington Post: Scott Wilson writes that shared regional fears of a nuclear weapons possessing Iran might be a catalyst for a breakthrough in this week’s Arab-Israeli peace talks. “Iran’s ambitions, which have cast a long shadow over the greater Middle East, may serve as a common bond keeping a frail peace process intact despite threats that have arisen even before the negotiations open Thursday at the State Department,” he says. Wilson suggests that, if Israel is seriously considering a unilateral strike on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons facilities, Netanyahu will need to stick with peace talks and win goodwill with the White House.
- The Wall Street Journal: Daniel Henninger defends the U.S. invasion of Iraq as preemptively cutting off Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. Henninger theorizes that had the U.S. not invaded, Saddam Hussein would have been driven to pursue nuclear weapons in order to match Iran’s alleged pursuit of the bomb. “In such a world, Saddam would have aspired to play in the same league as Iran and NoKo. Would we have ‘contained’ him?” he asks. Henninger continues his exercise in hypothetical history by suggesting that Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Sudan would enter the “nuclear marketplace” if Iran and Iraq acquired nuclear weapons. He concludes: “The sacrifice made by the United States in Iraq took one of these nuclear-obsessed madmen off the table and gave the world more margin to deal with the threat that remains, if the world’s leadership is up to it. A big if.”
- Foreign Policy: Author Hooman Majd contests a recent U.S. talking point that sanctions are working. Citing political infighting between various conservative factions, the Obama administration argues that sanctions are having an effect. But Majd asserts that this is politics as usual — not a sign that there might be political space for a resurgent Green Movement. In fact, he says, no matter what happens, the real power center in Iran, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, remains firmly in the driver’s seat and the nuclear calculus is still a point of mutual agreement between the many political factions.
- JINSA Report: The ultra-hawkish advocacy organization, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), issued it’s latest e-mail blast calling Iran the “elephant” in the room in nearly every U.S. and Israeli strategic challenge in the region (this mirrors the ‘road to peace leads through Tehran’ meme discussed in yesterday’s TP’s). The U.S. needs “to tame it or remove” that elephant from Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and the “the Israel-Palestinian ‘peace’ talks,” JINSA argues.