Month: September 2010

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for September 21st, 2010:

Reuters: In a special report, Louis Charbonneau writes Turkey, among other U.S. allies, allows Iranian banks with links to Iran’s alleged nuclear program to do business within their borders. “The fact that Turkey is allowing itself to be used as a conduit for Iranian activity via Turkish banks and the Turkish lira is making it possible for Iranian funds in Turkish guise to make their way into Europe,” said an intelligence report provided to Reuters by “a diplomat.” Charbonneau acknowledges that “much of the trade is legitimate” but “if Turkey becomes a virtual safe haven for Iranian banking activities, it will be easier for Tehran to dodge sanctions, according to diplomats.” (Neoconservatives, such as Michael Rubin, have been quick to question Turkey’s commitment to sanctions. Dr. Serkan Zorba wrote on LobeLog yesterday about the misinformation surrounding claims that Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan received $25 million from Iran.)

McClatchy: James Rosen reports on comments made by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Monday, when Graham said the U.S. must be prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. “If you use military force against Iran, you’ve opened up Pandora’s box,” Graham told the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “If you allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, you’ve emptied Pandora’s box. I’d rather open up Pandora’s box than empty it.” He continued, “From my point of view, if we engage in military operations as a last resort, the United States should have in mind the goal of changing the regime.” “Not by invading (Iran), but by launching a military strike by air and sea,” advised Graham.

National Review: For the October 4 print edition of the right-wing magazine, former George W. Bush National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism, Juan Zarate, writes that sanctions against Iran are “biting, but it isn’t enough.” Zarate calls for further isolation to slow Iran’s nuclear program, support for internal dissent, and “build[ing] other forms of leverage.” The latter refers to the “military option.” Zarate supports his bullet-point recommendations by citing, in part, the neocon-written report Jim Lobe refers to as a “roadmap to war with Iran”: “Maintain a credible military option, as the Bipartisan Policy Center has recently recommended. This will keep the possibility of force in the mind of the Iranian regime and reassure our allies […] — and perhaps ask the Israelis not to attack Iranian nuclear sites.”

Weekly Standard: On the magazine’s blog, the Standard’s co-founder and editor Bill Kristol reproduces in full remarks made around Washington by Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the United States. Kristol picks out “key passages” which focus on what Oren calls “radical, genocidal Iran.” When speaking at synagogues, Oren asks congregants to put themselves in the shoes of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu in order to “stand with [Israel] as we resist Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,” and to “respect the decisions we take.” Kristol appears to interpret this as softening up a sympathetic U.S. audience for an Israeli attack on Iran: “It would seem that if President Obama does not act to stop Iran, Prime Minister Netanyahu will.”

MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan and Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald gang up on neocon warmonger Clifford May. Ratigan is not buying any of the anti-Iran fearmongering.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for September 18-20th, 2010:

NBC’s Meet the Press: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC’s David Gregory, “I don’t think the, the stars are lining up for an attack on Iran either by Israel alone, or Israel in concert with the United States, or the United States alone. I don’t think that’s going to happen.” Powell said the U.S. should focus on finding a way for Iran to have a nuclear program dedicated to power production. Powell flatly rejected the arguments that a nuclear weapons possessing Iran would pose a threat to the U.S. or that the Iranian government is suicidal. “[W]hat can they do with a nuclear weapon compared to what we could do in return? I don’t think it is–you know, they are interested in remaining in power. The easiest way for them to lose power is to seriously threaten or use such a weapon,” he concluded.

Reuters: International sanctions against Iran are having an impact and “creating leverage for diplomacy,” according to Stuart Levey, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. The Treasury Department’s curbs on financial institutions doing business with blacklisted Iranian entities have created a “bleak” investment landscape for Iran. Levey adds, “We believe Iran’s leadership was caught off guard by the speed, intensity and scope of the new measures, misjudging the strength of the international community’s will.”

The Washington Post: On Sunday, The Council on Foreign Relations’ Ray Takeyh arguedthe Obama administration’s emphasis on sanctions overlooks the domestic politics and ideologies which prevent Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from making “subtle estimates of national interests.” “The Islamic Republic, however, is too wedded to its ideological verities and too subsumed by its rivalries to engage in such judicious determinations,” says Takeyh. He concludes the only way forward for the U.S. is to support “an Iranian political class that is inclined to displace dogma with pragmatism. And that still remains the indomitable Green movement.” Jeffrey Goldberg picked up on Takeyh’s piece today and claims the scenario described by Takeyh will result in a crisis, referencing his own Atlantic cover story, “The Point of No Return.”

ABC’s This Week: On ABC’s Sunday talk show, Christiane Amanpour sat down separately with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Jerusalem and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York, in town this week for the UN General Assembly. Clinton described sanctions as a “tool…not an end in themselves.” Sanctions were “biting,” she said, and called for Iran to return to the P5+1 talks over its nuclear program and allow full IAEA inspection. Ahmadinejad told Amanpour that all of Iran’s nuclear rector activity was monitored by camera, the IAEA was becoming politicized and the sanctions were “meaningless.” He did acknowledge he was taking “sanctions seriously” — a response to former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s request that Iran’s leadership not treat sanctions as a “joke.” However, Ahmedinejad also took exception to Clinton’s assessment of the effectiveness of sanctions: “Taking [sanctions] seriously is different from believing that they are effective.”

The Guardian: In the left-leaning British daily’s Comment Is Free section, the University of Maryland’s Manuel Hassassian and Edward Edy Kaufman make a case for linkage — that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal “could actually neutralise the Iranian nuclear peril.” They note if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “can offer a credible alternative [to Iranian support for Arab resistance groups on Israel’s borders], it offers excellent prospects for trumping the rejectionists’ appeal.” They point out Iran is one of the 57 Muslim countries that have endorsed a plan by the Arab League to support a peace deal, in which the 22 members of the Arab League said they would normalize relations with Israel. “This kind of linkage” — and Israeli-Palestinian peace deal first — “may be the only way to achieve results in which all the parties – Israelis, Palestinians, Americans and Iranians – can ‘win,’” write Hassassian and Kaufman, who are respectively Palestinian and Israeli.

As the U.S., British and French UN envoys call for expediting the process to set up a UN panel to monitor Iran’s compliance with sanctions, neoconservatives in Washington are increasingly focusing their attention on the countries which continue to trade with the Islamic Republic.

Numerous op-eds and opinion pieces have pointed to Russia, China, and to a lesser degree, Turkey as nations ultimately responsible should sanctions fail. Although not all pundits have taken this argument to its logical conclusion, some have suggested sanctions have already failed and it’s time to move forward with military options.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) has been one of the more outspoken organizations on the dangers of Chinese and Russian sanction-busting trade with Iran. Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz, respectively a fellow and executive director of FDD, wrote in a September 13 Wall StreetJournal op-ed that China and Russia will continue to fill "the void" unless America punishes their "subversiveness" on sanctions.

They concluded that:

All of the offending Russian and Chinese companies could be banned from receiving U.S. government contracts and forcibly divested from state pension funds.

Of course, the diplomatic and economic fallout from such an aggressive policy against Chinese and Russian companies would have consequences, which appear to be of little concern to the op-ed’s authors. This past July, Gerecht made the case for an Israeli bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities in a Weekly Standard article.

Earlier this month, the FDD released a report co-authored by Dubowitz, "Iran’s Chinese Energy Partners," which called for U.S. sanctions against Chinese companies that continue to engage in oil and gas projects in Iran.

Dubowitz, in a press release, said:

If the U.S. does not counter Beijing, then the progress the administration has made with the Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans, Canadians and Australians, as well as the scores of companies that have terminated their business ties with Iran, could unravel.

Last Friday’s report that Turkey might triple its trade with Iran over the next five years has already drawn the assurance of Commentary‘s Jonathan Tobin that "Iran Sanctions are Futile." American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Resident Scholar Michael Rubinwas incredulous that the U.S. is selling Turkey the latest F-35 Joint Strike Fighters "without so much as a study to ensure that Turkey cannot transfer the technology upon which our Air Force will depend to Iran."

While China, Russia and Turkey’s business dealings with Iran underscore the difficulty of imposing effective multilateral sanctions in a global economy, it’s worth considering what price must be paid to close the holes in the sanctions.

The Obama administration has made steady progress over the last year to improve relations with China and Russia. But with the recent falling out between Turkey and Israel over the Gaza flotilla, the Obama administration seriously risks damaging relations with one of the U.S.’s closest allies in the Muslim world.

While FDD’s Gerecht and Dubowitz may only regard a crackdown on sanctions-busting companies – or, for that matter, an outright acknowledgment that sanctions have failed because of Russian and Chinese obstinance – as items to be checked off prior to an inevitable Israeli or U.S. bombing run on Iranian nuclear sites, the costs might be higher than they would care to admit.

By putting the U.S.’s strategic and trade relationships with Russia, China and Turkey on the line, the proponents of “crippling sanctions” have dramatically raised the costs of their policies. Even neoconservatives admit that this policy – effective punitive measures against sanctions-busters – may itself trigger a potentially disastrous Israeli bombing run on Iran.

Dubowitz and Gerecht wrote:

Any U.S. action will surely infuriate Moscow and Beijing, as well as those in Washington who have worked to “reset” our relations with both countries. Russia and China could retaliate in a variety of hardball ways that could greatly complicate American and European strategic interests. If Russia were to start delivering S-300 antiaircraft missiles to Tehran, for example, it could well provoke an Israeli preventive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The U.S. militaryindustrialcongressional complex has stumbled upon yet another gonzo way to turn huge masses of people against the United States Government — and "we the people," because "we" support it.

Piggy-backed on the chronic collateral murder of innocent men, women and children in foreign lands by illegal — not to mention mistaken and inexact — drone attacks, this one is really impressive:

FERYAL ALI GAUHAR: "…the base for the drones, where they’re housed before they are automated, is in Pakistan…. I just happened to stumble across a contractor-and that’s not the Blackwater contractor-the contractor who built the base… he was there at the time of the flooding… he actually mentioned to me that the River Indus… was breached on the left bank deliberately in order to protect the base, which is on the right bank. And the breaching caused, consequentially, the inundation of an entire district, which resulted in the displacement of millions, not thousands, but millions, because we have 170 million people in the country, and this particular district is one of the most densely populated…"

AMY GOODMAN: "And this is a base that is used, run by US military, to run its drone attacks?"

FERYAL ALI GAUHAR: Oh, absolutely…. –Activists Go on Trial in Nevada for Protesting Obama Admin Drone Program