Iran: Counterproductive Sanctions

And so, the United States has succeeded in rallying China and Russia to begin a new round of sanctions against Iran. The proposition was accepted yesterday at the U.N. Security Council, with 12 for, two against (Brazil and Turkey) and one abstention (Lebanon).

Having established himself as the man who reached out to Iran — through video wishes for the Persian New Year and through his offer to reopen dialogue — Barack Obama appears to Americans to be a president conscious of the dangers to the world and of a diplomacy that is bringing certain success. The White House gave itself an advantage, in a way, having driven a wedge between Tehran and its two most important commercial partners: Beijing and Moscow.

But … and there are a lot of buts. First, business will continue as usual. China isn’t going to stop buying 550,000 barrels of gas a day from Iran, its second largest supplier, and Russia is not going to stop selling weapons to Iran. Next, the proposition voted on yesterday had been significantly softened, mostly to convince Moscow and Beijing to ask themselves if blacklisting 40 Iranian companies and one individual is really going to curb the Iranian nuclear program. The Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, the principle targets of these new sanctions, will know how to create other front organizations to continue spreading their influence on the Iranian economy. It’s been 31 years that Iran has been living under various forms of sanctions and embargos, and they haven’t prevented it from becoming a true regional power or expanding all of its sectors — including the nuclear one, with an expertise that absolutely stupefies the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In fact, the two collateral damages of these new sanctions seem to be, on the one hand, the possibility of Turkey playing an intermediary role (especially a few days after the Gaza flotilla episode) and on the other, the Iranian Green Movement, an opposition movement that appeared immediately after the controversial presidential election in June 2009. These sanctions are a windfall for President Ahmadinejad. They reinforce his speech targeting “outside enemies” and their supposed ties with “inside enemies.” They detract attention from the ruthless repression that has been raging on in Tehran during the past year. They provide him with a golden excuse to betray his principle electoral promise to help ordinary Iranians at the bottom of the ladder, who suffer like never before from unemployment and inflation.