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October 14, 2004
Liberty vs. The Mullahs
via New Statesman -
...
"Iran is surrounded, and in some cases threatened, by nuclear countries and forces: the Americans in the Gulf, Nato's arms in Turkey, Israel (with its formidable though absurdly unacknowledged nuclear arsenal), Russia and Pakistan. Having its own bomb would lessen the constraints, allowing Iran more freedom to try to expand its theocratic influence. Whatever the deplorable consequences of a nuclear Iran for world safety - not only the perils of a bomb in the hands of a fundamentalist regime, but also the copycat effect on the region, possibly signalling the death knell of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) - it would provide a safety net for Tehran's own leaders."
...
"Yet with George W Bush and Ayatollah Khamenei in charge of their respective countries, with hard men on both sides, the notion of a new relationship seems a forlorn, if not surreal, hope. The much more likely outcome, if Iran continues to defy the IAEA, is that the US will succeed, at the end of this year, in getting Iran referred to the UN Security Council for breach of the NPT, and will then press the council to punish Iran with some form of sanctions. It is quite unclear what such sanctions might be, beyond a tightening of existing restrictions on dual-use equipment and so forth, or indeed whether Russia and China would allow any sanctions resolution to get through the council.
In its current mood, Iran would probably shrug off minor sanctions. But, for all its bravado, the country is not in a strong position economically. For the moment, it is floating along, buoyed up by the high price of oil, its people lulled into political passivity. But oil and gas apart, Iran has nothing to sustain it. Its other industries are sclerotic, and a strong nationalistic tendency in the new parliament (right-wing, because most reformist candidates were barred from competing in February's general election) is blocking development by insisting on vetting all foreign contracts. While America's unilateral sanctions are painful, barring all US investment and deterring others from investing in Iran's oil and gas, UN oil sanctions would destroy the regime.
None the less, it is unlikely that petroleum consumers will impose oil sanctions, if for no other reason than the precipitous effect this would have on oil prices. Nor, so long as the top people in Iran and America keep their jobs, is there likely to be any sort of grand, solve-all bargain. So we have a stalemate: it looks as if the perilous brinkmanship will continue - until one side or the other steps over the edge."
Posted by ActivistChat.com at October 14, 2004 01:35 PM
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