1.
U.S.: OBAMA LOSING CONTROL OF IRAN POLICY
By Ali Gharib
Inter Press Service
January 29, 2010
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50161
WASHINGTON -- In a surprisingly swift move on Thursday night that could have wide-ranging implications, the U.S. Senate passed a bill containing broad unilateral sanctions to punish foreign companies that export gasoline to Iran or help expand its domestic refinery capabilities.
The voice vote came at the eleventh hour before the chamber recessed so legislators could go home to campaign. The bill cannot come before the president to be signed into law until a conference procedure combines it with a similar House bill, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA), passed in October.
The Senate move reveals an administration losing control of even its own party in foreign policy dealings, as U.S. President Barack Obama has tried to maintain engagement with Iran aimed at curbing its nuclear program, which the Islamic Republic insists is for peaceful purposes.
Along with scores of Democrats, who favored the bill over the administration's objections, the effort was supported by Iran hawks including Republican co-sponsor John Kyl and neoconservative independent Joe Lieberman, and was characterized by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as a shot at Obama.
"If the Obama administration will not take action against this regime, then Congress must," McConnell said.
The administration had raised its issues with the bill in a December letter from Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg to Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, complaining that the bill limited the president's flexibility.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made late December comments urging caution in applying broad sanctions that might harm and alienate the struggling Iranian opposition movement, asking instead for sanctions that targeted Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), thought to be responsible for crackdowns against opposition demonstrators.
The contents of the bill require the president to impose the wide-ranging sanctions, restraining the traditional presidential foreign policy waiver to a line-by-line exemption that forces Obama to spend political capital.
However, after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- beset by a host of political problems from slow economic recovery to stalled health care reform -- made it clear that he intended to pursue the bill, the administration dropped its public opposition, perhaps hoping that it could change the bill with amendments or in conference.
But a compromise scuttled amendments in Thursday night's brief deliberations.
In a dramatic twist reported by ForeignPolicy.com, Republican Senator John McCain tried to introduce an amendment to the bill that would name, shame, and sanction specific Iranian human rights violators -- a theme that echoes the administration calls for more targeted sanctions.
But McCain dropped his amendments at the behest of Sen. Lieberman. The leadership of both parties was apparently concerned that if amendments were introduced, the process would be slowed and the bill might not come to a vote in time.
And Patrick Disney, the assistant policy director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which supports engagement, said that even in conference, it will be difficult to remove the language that binds Obama's hands.
"I wouldn't be surprised if they expedited the conference," he told IPS. "I don't know if they'll be able to take that part out because it's the main central architecture of the bills."
The rushed vote with almost no debate came a week before France, which supports sanctions on Iran, is to take the presidency of the United Nations Security Council from China, which has balked at punishing Iran as negotiations are ongoing. Passing the bill as the administration negotiated with the Security Council was viewed as diplomatically problematic.
But Richard Sawaya, the president of USA*Engage, a group that opposes unilateral sanctions, told IPS that passing the bill before or during Security Council negotiations was "a distinction without a difference."
Another aspect of the Dodd bill raising eyebrows is the codification into law of an embargo against Iran imposed by Pres. Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Dodd bill requires Congress to approve the lifting of the embargo.
Disney of NIAC said that the bill, rather than giving the president more tools for negotiating with Iran, virtually takes the embargo off the table as a U.S. bargaining chip.
"This means that no president can lift the embargo without certifying to Congress that Iran has met a laundry list of demands that no president in his right mind will certify," Disney told IPS.
"All of the things that this bill sought to do, the president had the power to do already," he said. "By Congress passing these bills, it removed the president's ability to walk things back without Congress."
One of the prime dangers of pursuing such draconian sanctions is that, while Obama's tentative year-end deadline for negotiations to bear fruit has passed, a slow-paced back and forth between Iranians and the multilateral team including the U.S. is still evolving.
The U.S. has not even responded to the latest Iranian counter-offer for a uranium swap proposal.
The situation is also complicated by the resilient Iranian opposition, which has maintained its struggle against Iran's hard-line leadership after alleged widespread voter fraud in the June election that re-installed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's president.
While the Obama administration has taken a considerably more cautious tone since June -- and especially in the subsequent months, as the opposition has refused to cower in the face of a brutal crackdown -- hard-liners in Congress appear to be deaf to the fluid realities on the ground in the Islamic Republic.
"I would think the first rule is the physician's rule, which is 'do no harm,'" said Sawaya of USA*Engage.
Furthermore, "crippling sanctions," as broad-based gas sanctions are often called, is a potential checklist item on a path to military confrontation with Iran. But some think imposing and enforcing the sanctions themselves could be tantamount to war.
"Even half of the people that proposed (gas sanctions) say the only way to really impose that is a naval blockade," said Sawaya. "Well, that's an act of war!"
In a statement Friday, Debra DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now, urged that the bill be modified when members of the House and Senate meet to reconcile their respective versions of the legislation.
"The House-Senate conference offers the last chance for Congress to do the right thing here: to amend this bill to make it consistent with a rational approach to Iran, with the national interests of the United States, and with the multilateral approach that is being pursued by the president of the United States," she said.
2.
OBAMA, THE NEOCONS, AND IRAN
by Andrew Sullivan
The Daily Dish
January 11, 2010
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/obama-the-neocons-and-iran.html
AIPAC wants massive crippling sanctions against Israel's prime enemy in the Middle East. Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the US, keeps making that case. The Obama administration, on the other hand, wants sanctions targeted more narrowly at the regime rather than the people: "U.S. Treasury Department strategists already have been focusing on Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has emerged as the economic and military power behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. -- In recent weeks, senior Green Movement figures -- who have been speaking at major Washington think tanks -- have made up a list of IRGC-related companies they suggest targeting, which has been forwarded to the Obama administration by third parties."
Clinton has been working indirectly with the Green Movement to fashion sanctions that will support them (their leaders oppose the kind of sanctions AIPAC wants). Lieberman and McCain have stated that they, rather than the president, determine American foreign policy toward Israel and Iran. They've stated that in Israel in a blatant attempt to undermine a sitting president's leverage with an ally he wants to nudge away from the brink of self-destruction.
We'll see in the near future if they are right. I mean: McCain won the last election, right? Or does it really matter who wins elections as far as Middle East policy is concerned?
3.
SANCTIONS ONLY HURT ORDINARY IRANIANS
By Muhammad Sahimi
Antiwar.com
January 30, 2010
http://original.antiwar.com/sahimi/2010/01/29/sanctions-only-hurt-ordinary-iranians/
On Thursday, January 28, the Senate approved legislation that allows the President to impose sanctions on any entity that exports gasoline to Iran, or help expand its refining capacity by denying them loans from American financial institutions. A largely similar legislation has already been passed by the House of Representatives. The legislation is supposedly intended to pressure the Islamic Republic to give up its uranium enrichment program.
The Senate bill extends sanctions to companies that build oil and gas pipelines in Iran and provide tankers to move Iran’s petroleum. It also prohibits the U.S. government from buying goods from foreign companies that work in Iran’s energy sector. So, in effect the Senate bill imposes sanctions on Iran’s entire oil and natural gas industry.
Iran has the world’s third biggest oil reserves, but imports a significant fraction of its gasoline to meet domestic demand, because it lacks enough refining capacity. Anticipating the gasoline sanctions for at least two years, Iran has been working hard to reduce its dependency on imports of gasoline, reducing it from 40 percent of total consumption to 25-30 percent. In addition, as I described in a previous article, Tehran can take several relatively simple steps to further reduce its dependency on the gasoline imports.
Although in his State of the Union address on Wednesday January 27, President Obama warned Iran that it faces "growing consequences" over its nuclear program, the administration was not overly interested in the legislation. On January 4th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that (emphasis mine): "Our goal is to pressure the Iranian government, particularly the Revolutionary Guard elements, *without contributing to the suffering of the ordinary [Iranians], who deserve better than what they currently are receiving*."
This is a position that she reiterated on January 11.
P.J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman, reiterated the Administration position on January 5th (emphasis mine): "As the Secretary said, one possibility is to focus more specifically on the Revolutionary Guards, the IRGC. We’re taking a much more prominent role within Iran. We want to do this in a way that can *target specific entities within the Iranian Government but not punish the Iranian people*, who are clearly looking for a different relationship with their government."
Thus, the Administration is apparently seeking targeted sanctions that hurt only the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite hard-line part of Iran’s military that essentially runs the country. Clearly, gasoline sanctions is not one of them. The U.S. business groups had also warned the administration that the bill would undercut the President’s strategy of working with U.S. allies in finding a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program, because the legislation targets the U.S. allies’ companies that do business with Iran.
But, the Israel lobby and its agents in the Senate, Senator Joseph Lieberman and others, wanted the legislation approved, and so it was. Indeed, the passage of the legislation was praised by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which called for even tougher sanctions.
The legislation is terrible news for ordinary Iranians that have been struggling to make ends meet, amidst the deep crisis that their nation has been facing in the aftermath of the June 12 rigged presidential election. At least a million Iranians work in the transportation sector of Iran’s economy, with millions more depending on transportation for their work and business, not to mention the agriculture sector that also relies heavily on transportation.
In addition, it is well-known in Iran that there is a gasoline “Mafia” that is linked to the IRGC. They sell the gasoline that is subsidized by the government in neighboring countries at a much higher price and make a huge profit. The sanctions, which inevitably would lead to much higher gasoline price in Iran, would only tighten the “Mafia’s” grip on the gasoline market, hence increasing the power that the IRGC already has, completely the opposite of the effect that the legislation is supposedly intended for.
If the purpose of such legislation is to create hardship for Iranians in order to motivate them to put pressure on their government, there is no need for it. A great majority of Iranians are already deeply angered about what has been happening in Iran in the aftermath of the June 12 rigged presidential election. There have been almost constant demonstrations; daily arrests of political figures, journalists, university students, human rights advocates and ordinary people; thousands have been detained; dozens have been murdered; show trials have been held; unjustified sentences have been handed out to the imprisoned people, and several have been hanged.
These developments have given birth to the Green Movement that has been gathering strength over the past several months. The Green Movement’s leaders, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Moussavi, former parliament Speaker, Mehdi Karroubi, and former president Mohammad Khatami, have opposed sanctions, particularly those that hurt only ordinary Iranians. But, while the sponsors of the Congress sanctions bill pay lip service to the bravery of Iranian people and their courage to push the hardliners, they also hurt them by imposing such sanctions, because the goal is not to help the Iranian people, but satisfy Israel and its lobby.
If the purpose of such legislations is to hurt Iran’s economy to the point that it would cripple the hardliners and prevent them from pursuing their nuclear program, there is no need for them. First of all, Iran’s nuclear program has significantly slowed down, due to both the internal crisis and technical difficulty. The Obama administration concedes that, even if Iran were to produce a nuclear weapon, it does not have a breakout capability for up to three years, ample time for both diplomacy and to see where Iran’s internal developments take the nation.
Secondly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s economic policy -- if it can be called as such -- is already damaging Iran’s economy and people’s economic welfare greatly. Inflation is rampant, to the point that the government is seriously thinking about devaluing Iran’s currency, the rial. Beginning in the upcoming Iranian New Year that will start on March 21, Ahmadinejad will eliminate all the subsidies to basic commodities, food stuff, etc., and will remove all price controls. Iran’s most prominent economists have warned that the action will increase the rate of inflation to 60 percent (from its current official rate of close to 30 percent), further impoverish millions of Iranians, and ruin many businesses.
In addition, Iran has a labor movement that is increasingly stronger and more vocal.
The movement is demanding better pay, more labor-friendly laws, uprooting of corruption, and cutting off the hands of the IRGC from the economy. The labor movement only adds strength to the Green Movement.
Therefore, Iran’s internal developments and dynamics are doing what even the best-intentioned pieces of legislation by foreign powers cannot achieve, namely, making the Iranian people even more determined to push for a democratic political system, rule of law, and a completely free press that would reveal the depth of corruption and mismanagement by the hardliners that are the root cause of the terrible economic situation in Iran.
Iranian people do not need, nor have they called for, foreign interference in their internal affairs (which the gasoline legislation intends). They can address their problems by themselves. What they need are moral support and strong and meaningful condemnation of the gross violations of human rights that are daily occurrences in Iran.
If sanctions are to be imposed, they should strip away the power of the hardliners to block the free flow of information by making available to Iranian people the technology to break the hardliners’ grip on the internet, blocking websites, and slowing down the internet traffic, and other means of mass communication. If sanctions are to be imposed, they should isolate the IRGC leaders and their allies in Iran’s conservative camp, not hurting Iranians just when their century old struggle for democracy is beginning to bear fruit.
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