Saturday, July 21, 2007
Iran and the sanctions dilemma
The July 21st issue of The Economist (in my mailbox last night) has a multiarticle review of Iran with the subtitle "The Revolution Strikes Back." If you are not a subscriber, you should buy it at the newsstand. There is a lot in the survey, and it does a good job of tracing the options for confronting or containing Iran. On the matter of economic sanctions, The Economist wonders whether even strong sanctions can change the political dynamic within Iran enough to change the Islamic Republic's behavior in ways that matter to the West. This bit puts the potato on the fork:
Nonetheless, it is not clear that sanctions are even close to imposing the sort of pain needed to alter the government's nuclear behaviour. They have pushed down living standards, but war and revolution have taught Iranians how to muddle through. An economy like Iran's, dominated by the government budget, is better able than most to take the travails of the private sector in its stride. And since energy exports make up almost half the government's revenues, high world prices (kept high in part by the tension over Iran) have compensated nicely for much of the damage sanctions have inflicted. Besides, many powerful Iranians prosper through their control of a relatively closed economy. The openness the world proffers as an “incentive” to give up the bomb strikes at some of this group's vested interests.
The problem is that Iran is doing things that many in the West, including many people who are not Dick Cheney, want it to stop doing. Broadly, there are two options. First, we can decide that we can contain and deter Iran sufficiently that we do not need to coerce it into changing its behavior. In general, this was our strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union until the Reagan presidency. The problem is that there is no consensus that Iran -- run as it is by religious zealots who believe that suicide missions are a moral tactically advantageous weapon in war -- is containable and deterrable in the same way that the Soviet Union was. Alternatively, we can coerce Iran to change its ways. There are many tools for this at the West's disposal, but almost all of them -- including overt military action and, if you believe The Economist, stiff economic sanctions -- may have the perverse result of strengthening the regime rather than weakening it.
8 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Jul 21, 01:13:00 PM:
The problem with Iran is that it is not deferrable. We have not confronted an unbroken string of Iranian aggressions: from killing our guys in Iraq and Afghanistan to Khobar Towers, 9/11 help, Buenos Aires, Beirut, Embassy take-over/hostages.
By nearly 30 years of retreat/surrender we have taught every Iranian that we will do nothing in the face of aggression.
Moreover unlike the Soviet Union, Iran has a habit and the means to use deniable proxies. They could give nukes to Al Qaeda and watch NYC and DC vanish in a flash. Deniable.
Deniable cut-outs for nuclear states convinced there is no consequences equals dead American Cities. Absent the will to demonstrate unmistakably that there DO exist consequences (that means probably killing a lot of people in a pre-emptive attack "bolt from the blue" style).
By 
Purple Avenger, at
Sat Jul 21, 05:22:00 PM:
Hate to say it, but this country probably will have to lose a city before it truly wakes up.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Jul 21, 05:36:00 PM:
By , at
Sat Jul 21, 10:47:00 PM:
Sanctions have been in place more or less continuously for 30 years, as noted earlier. They haven't had any discernable impact.
I won't join you in speculating how many cities we lose before America wakes up, because it's ghoulish. I agree, though, that we're headed that way.
Lets hope that the elections in Turkey turn out well, that we succeed in stabilizing the western front in Iraq and that we can manage to bring some pressure to bear from Afghanistan (somehow). It's a lot to hope for.
If you didn't see it, here's a quick round up of Iranian news, none of which inspires anything other than trepidation.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sun Jul 22, 10:55:00 AM:
The fundamental problem here is that so far all notions of "sanctions" are based on western notions of what will hurt rather than trying to get into the mullah's minds and figure out what will actually move them.
What I'm thinking is we need to figure out not what should be removed (because they'll clearly tolerate quite austere conditions), rather what we can ADD. A social Trojan Horse as it were. Something they'll be willing to let in that will ultimately be the undoing of the mullahs.
Precisely what this might be isn't clear to me at the moment, but I'm guessing it'll have something to do with the internet and consumer electronics.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Jul 22, 01:15:00 PM:
Petroleum blockade. Remove those funds and the Iranian state will implode. Or be moved to acts of extreme violence.
Unfortunately, because of its inherent value to all the nations and companies that buy it, that's politically un-doable outside of an actual war.
By , at
Sun Jul 22, 03:51:00 PM:
Kill their refining ability, nuclear enrichment facilities and the government fortress under the park in Tehran in overnight hits. Tell them the next day that is a small down payment and future actions can be deferred with remedial changes in behavoir.
By , at
Mon Jul 23, 06:02:00 PM:
A bit of good news, from the Turkish front. At some point, hopefully, Iran's population will move from "latently restive" to "angry", and perhaps having a successful democracy in their traditional rival to the north is a good example to the Iranians of how a stable, western oriented republican government could help move their country forward.
