Sanctioning Iran

How low is the international appetite for trade sanctions against Iran?

Energy-hungry China, which has extensive business interests in Iran, supported earlier U.N. resolutions against Tehran, but has sided with Russia in opposing a new sanctions resolution being sought by Washington and its allies, instead calling for more intensive negotiations.

That opposition has hardened since the December release of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran stopped working on a secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, contradicting Washington’s previous view that Tehran was continuing such activities….

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu indicated Thursday there were no changes to China’s opposition to new sanctions. Beijing hopes the international community will “intensify diplomatic efforts for an early resumption of negotiations,” she said at a regular news briefing.

Very low.

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GAO: Iran Sanctions Ineffective

Twenty years of unilateral sanctions against Iran and what do we have to show for it? Very little, according to this freshly released GAO report.

[T]he overall impact of sanctions, and the extent to which these sanctions further U.S. objectives, is unclear. On the other hand, some evidence, such as foreign firms signing contracts to invest in Iran’s energy sector and Iran’s continued proliferation efforts, raise questions about the extent of the sanctions’ impact.

The report was commissioned by Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), who is now the ranking member on the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. The panel is chaired by Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) who, during the fall, held three hearings examining the various ways in which U.S.-Iran relations are flawed.

At those hearings, Shays tended to cast the foreign policy options available to the United States as a choice between increasingly hostile tactics: diplomacy, sanctions, and violence. And unsurprisingly, the often-hawkish Republican wasn’t keen on a traditional diplomatic approach. By my count, then, the ineffectiveness of the unilateral sanctions regime leaves Shays and his allies in Congress to advocate for one of two approaches: a broad program aimed at convincing international institutions–the same ones the government has spent the last seven years ridiculing–to impose multilateral sanctions (on trade and arms and so forth), or regime change.

So! What’s the appetite like in the rest of the world for imposing–without first attempting a good-faith program of negotiations–the sort of sanctions that would cripple the Iranian economy? GAO: “Iran’s overall trade with the world has grown since the U.S. imposed sanctions.” Um. Not particularly high.

Which is all to say that if there ever any doubt about the feasibility of the White House’s Iran strategy, this report should clear all that right up. The president may not have much of an appetite for negotiating, but the country doesn’t have much of an appetite for another war, and the current volley (what you might call “Shays’ middle option”) has has come back to Earth with a resounding thud.

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Kucinich Speaks Up

About keeping the rhetoric down. From the floor of the House today:

Over the past few years, this Administration has been beating the drums of war against Iran. There are parallels between their efforts to try to create a war against Iran and the falsehoods that set us on a path to war against Iraq.

We know that the United States intelligence community was able to demonstrate that the Administration’s claims that Iran had a nuclear weapons program were, in fact, not true.

The January 6 incident at the Strait of Hormuz is still another cause for this Congress to look deeply at the Administration’s Iranian war buildup.

It appears from news reports that the Department of Defense grossly inflated an encounter that took place in the Strait — an encounter that was not unlike any that had taken place before. Not only did the Department of Defense inflate it, but they fabricated information that would cause the American people to believe that Iran was demonstrating military aggressiveness.

A good way to pressure those with more power to conduct a thorough investigation.

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No Hearing for Rodriguez…Yet

Jose Rodriguez, Jr., the former Director of the National Clandestine Service who in 2005, over the alleged objections of then-CIA chief Porter Goss, destroyed two videotaped interrogation and torture sessions, has managed to delay his appearance before the House Intelligence committee. Rodriguez has been subpoenaed by the committee–chaired by Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx.)–but is refusing to appear without a grant of immunity. His attorney is conducting negotiations with House counsel, but the delay comes at a time when the congressional inquiry into the destroyed tapes is being stymied on a number of fronts, and when Reyes may not be too excited about the idea of granting immunity. Stay tuned.

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More Accidental War

Several weeks ago, The Media Consortium brought you a story about the risk of an accidental war with Iran, and last week, in the Strait of Hormuz, there was nearly just such a catastrophe. From the look of things, the actual threat level was fairly low, but the Navy says they were moments away from firing. But though the real-time exchange did not result in any violence, the White House nonetheless pounced on the opportunity to escalate tensions between Washington and Tehran.

I’ve spoken to staff members of both the House and Senate Armed Services committees–two of the committees with jurisdiction over the issue–and both are following the incident extremely closely. The Senate committee will receive a staff briefing about the melee later this week while its members do what they do–in their districts and elsewhere–during recess. No official word on whether any of this will lead to hearings. But these are the first steps.

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The Year in Oversight

The good, the bad and the ugly of the Democratic Congress’ year of trying to gavel the Bush administration into order.

By Brian Beutler
The Media Consortium

As the year draws to a close, it will be tempting for pundits—liberal and otherwise—to despair at the Democrats’ inability to wield their new congressional leadership to affect real and swift change in the country. After all, the war in Iraq not only continues, but 2007 was its deadliest year. FISA presents a greater danger to American civil liberties today than it did when the Democrats took their gavels in January. And the radiant vision of Karl Rove being escorted down Pennsylvania Avenue to jail never came to pass. Read the full report…

See more tagged with: Blackwater, FISA, Homeland Security, Terrorist Surveillance Program and Whistleblowers

No Talking to the Enemy

Citizens and legislators have tried to build pressure valves for U.S.-Iranian hostility. But both governments have gagged conversationalists with diplomatic red tape.

By Brian Beutler
The Media Consortium

About five years ago, a young Iranian man became involved with the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisburg, Pa., where he joined a program through which college students and recent graduates learn practical skills in conflict resolution. At the end of his stay, he returned to Iran, where he became a member of the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, via e-mail, kept in touch with his religious friends in the United States. Read the full report…

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The Accidental War

It’s become fashionable in conservative Washington circles—among commentators with extraordinary access to the Bush administration—to suggest that people concerned about the threat of war with Iran are howling at phantoms. As the New York Times’ David Brooks wrote in a Nov. 6 column, “The Bush administration is not about to bomb Iran (trust me). It’s using diplomacy to build a coalition to balance it, and reverse an ugly tide.”

Washington Post columnist George Will struck a slightly less friendly tone with those who would actually support strikes, but drew the same conclusion, writing on Nov. 11 that “some Washington voices, many of them familiar, are reprising a familiar theme – Iran’s nuclear program is near a fruition that justifies preventive military action. Whether or not these voices should be heeded … they will not be.”
Read the full report…

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Iran Policy Counterattack

In the past month, President Bush and his allies in the Congress have set Washington once again buzzing with speculation about the administration’s end game for Iran — having accused the Iranians of stoking a third world war and dubbed the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. But as everyone from antiwar activists to military insiders wring their hands over the White House’s intentions, a lonely handful of Democratic legislators are working to wedge Congress between the administration and Tehran. Read the full report…

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Swarmed by Suspects

The Government Accountability Office reported last week that the terrorist watch list has ballooned to around 860,000 records, and is growing at a clip of 20,000 a month. That’s a list four times the size of even the most liberal estimate for the number of actual bad guys out there. On finding a terrorist in a hay stack.

By Brian Beutler
The Media Consortium

In the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States government compiled a list of 20 known terrorists: They were the 19 hijackers who died in the attacks and the one—now known to be Zacarias Moussaoui—who got away. Rapidly, however, that list grew.   Read the full report…

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