It now appears that the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA), Howard Berman’s sanctions bill targeting Iran’s refined petroleum sector, is likely to come up for a vote in the near future. AIPAC and other hawkish “Israel lobby” groups have made the sanctions bill their top priority for months now, and today brought news that the more moderate J Street is planning to go along with the sanctions bill.
For a comprehensive overview of why this is such bad news, see this post by Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now (APN). She includes a very thorough table summarizing all the flaws with the bill and recommendations for how it could be improved. The upshot, she writes, is that the Berman bill “leads to the very problematic conclusion that the US is seeking to inflict widespread suffering on the Iranian people in order to force them to put pressure on their government.”
Sanctions proponents’ reasoning is based on the rather dubious belief that if the U.S. starves the Iranian civilian population of resources they will blame their own government rather than ours. It is much the same logic that has led Israel to blockade Gaza for the past two and a half years, only to see Hamas become stronger than ever as a result; similarly, sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s killed hundreds of thousands of civilians (by the most conservative estimates) while doing nothing to weaken Saddam Hussein’s hold on power.
Of course, the overwhelming evidence suggests that unilateral sanctions will prove ineffectual in any case. In recent years the Iranian government has moved to decrease its reliance on refined petroleum imports in anticipation of sanctions, and without Russian and Chinese cooperation the measure likely to have virtually no bite. But since “effective” sanctions would mean in practice “successful in inflicting hardship on the Iranian civilian population,” then “ineffectual” would seem to be the best that we can hope for — better ineffectual than actively pernicious. Of course, best of all would be to do no harm in the first place. While some seem to be calculating that acquiescing on sanctions is necessary to stave off war, it is hard to see what positive result could possibly come from the deeply misguided Berman bill.
[Cross-posted at LobeLog.]
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hass says:
Daniel I think you're missing the point. The proponents of sanctions don't care if the sanctions themselves are effective or not -- they see sanctions as just one more step towards their real goal: a military confrontation. As long as the US is sanctioning Iran, the US is not engaging Iran -- and that's just fine with the Israelis and pro-Israeli lobbyists who are pushinhg this country towards war. With each step, they're closing off ways that Iran and the US can resolve their difference peacefully, and building up towards the military confrontation that they have always wanted. Dennis Ross, AIPAC's man in the Obama WHite House, has essentially said that all the negotiating done with Iran is simply pro-forma, and ultimately intended to legitimize war. That's why the US didn't even acknowledge Iran's compromise offers over its nuclear program that would have addressed any REAL concern about weapons proliferation. THey don't want a resolution -- they want war, regardless.
hass says:
Note also how the war proponents present this issue as a FALSE CHOICE: EITHER we sanction/pressure/bomb Iran into giving up their enrichment program OR ELSE Iran will get nuclear weapons. This of course conveniently overlooks all the peaceful ways out of this conflict that would address any REAL concern about weapons proliferation, whilst protecting Iran's legal right to have an enrichment program. For example, the IRanians themselves have offered to place restrictions on their nuclear program and open it to US participoation. We have ignored these solutions. Why? Because the whole "nuclear weapons" thing is a lie and a pretext. The proponents of war and sanctions on Iran need it as a justification for their cause. Everytime Iran has shown any flexibility -- for example by suspending enrichment for 2 years -- they have only increased their demands on Iran. It doesn't matter how many concessions Iran makes on the nuclear issue if the underlying political conflict (Israel's ambitions for regional domination) are not addressed.
Russ Wellen says:
Nothing says "failure of imagination" faster than sanctions.
Fred2 says:
If Israel had any plan for regional domination it would have been implemented already. Why wait until now?
Iran is clearly working hard toward nuclear weapons. They have developed several missiles which have no use without WMDs. They have lied to the IAEA and hidden enrichment plants, such as at Fordow/Qom. Iran has no enemies except those created by it's nuclear weapons program, which means these weapons are not defensive.
Sanctions have many problems, but they might persuade Iran to alter it's nuclear weapons plans. The alternative is going straight to military action.