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New US Sanctions on Iran

By Leslie on October 28, 2007 at 5:32 PM in Current Affairs

Imam Square, Isfahan, Iran.

Last Thursday, Bush imposed the stiffest economic sanctions against Iran since 1979. The new sanctions target the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC], the Qods force, Iranian banks, companies allegedly associated with the IRGC and individuals.

Bush’s announcement coincided with increased tensions between Turkey and Iraq, Kurdish tensions with Iran, news of deteriorating security in Afghanistan, Israel’s raid on Syria and the bombing in Karachi, Pakistan. On top of rising ME tensions and Bush’s war rhetoric, Bush also asked Congress for $88 million to equip B-2 stealth bombers with bunker busters, perhaps to be used against hardened targets most likely found in Iran.

Is Bush trying to start WWIII?

Bush’s unilateral action is likely to frustrate diplomatic efforts by increasing tensions, possibly paving the way for US military action. But Bush has yet to prove that Iran is doing anything illegal. [For example: The Bush administration's claims that "Iran is the major force funding and directing insurgent groups," which are killing US troops. See Larry Johnson's Sept. 12, 2007 post debunking that here.]

The sanctions, in fact, may harm US interests more than they harm Iran. By threatening reprisals against any country or foreign company that does business with Iran the US may be further isolating itself from those countries and companies, including our allies and close friends, which may also do business in the US. For example: Iran has huge oil and gas reserves, while many countries face growing energy needs, such as China and Russia. China is currently negotiating a big deal with Iran.

In addition, Bush policies are bankrupting our nation. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone could cost $2.4 trillion over the next decade. How much more in lives and treasure would war with Iran cost?

  • Delia

    I think the Bushies and neocons are still proceeding on the assumption that we’re the biggest, baddest power in the world and everyone needs us more than we need them. They’re reading the signs of the past and not the present. They proceed with this game and the US will become truly isolated in foreign affairs. We haven’t yet begun to plumb the damage this gang has done to American domestic prosperity. It takes a long time for the indicators to become clear, especially for the arrogant pricks who have seized control at the top.

    • G Hazeltine

      The initial consequences of an attack on Iran might be apparent sooner. In the 2002 Millennium Challenge war games (250 million dollars) Marine Corps Gen. Paul van Ripper, commanding the “Red Forces” (Iran) sank the American fleet – 16 ships, including an aircraft carrier and two helicopter carriers – in the first 48 hrs of the games. The number of ‘dead’ Americans was in the ‘thousands.’

      This was no fluke. Millennium Challenge was the largest and most expensive war game ever carried out by the American military. And van Ripper’s ‘unorthodox techniques’ are in fact Iranian doctrine.

      See this paper: “Obsolete Weapons, Unconventional Tactics, and Martyrdom Zeal: How Iran Would Apply its Asymmetric Naval Warfare Doctrine in a Future Conflict
      Date: April 2007
      Author: Jahangir Arasli”

      At: http://www.marshallcenter.org/site-graphic/lang-en/page-pubs-index-1/page-occpapers-research-1/xdocs/research/pubs/occ-papers/occpapers.htm

      We could not stop the scuds in the first Gulf War. The Israelis could not stop Hezbollah last summer. The entire Gulf is in the range of anti-ship missiles fired from the Iranian coast, fired in numbers sufficient to overwhelm any defense. Not to mention swarming attacks by small boats and planes (hundreds? thousands?), and advanced mines of which the Iranians may have thousands.

      Cheney knows all this. What is it that he has in mind?

      Another new Pearl Harbor?

  • http://www.deadtide.com Kyle

    But sanctions worked so well against Saddam and Castro. Oh, right.

  • peg

    From Larry’s post

    But Bush has yet to prove that Iran is doing anything illegal. [For example: The Bush administration’s claims that “Iran is the major force funding and directing insurgent groups,” which are killing US troops. See Larry Johnson’s Sept. 12, 2007 post debunking that here.]

    then from the previous post, Talk About Bullsh#t

    At this juncture in the presidential race I would say I am a Clinton supporter.

    Gen Clark, who is stumping for Hillary, was on Real Time with Bill Maher Friday and pretty much said “Iran is the major force funding and directing insurgent groups,”
    I think Larry needs to get in touch with General Clark.

    Thanks for this blog and the participants (with their comments) …otherwise, i’d be one of those 25% scared-sh#tless sheeple watching Faux Noise Channel here in my red state.

  • jcricket

    Of course Bush is trying to start WWIII. He desperately wants to be relevant and leave a legacy.

    The only man who drove two oil companies into the ground because he could not find oil in Texas, has nothing constructive to offer to history.

    All his life, his own failures were at the expense of others and the messes were cleaned up by others.

    Who cleans up the world when he is done with it? Will anything be left to clean up?

    • Fred C. Dobbs

      But always remember: He kept our boys out of Northern Ireland!!

      • Smilin’ Jim

        15 yards for doubly compounded ironies.

        Churchill, Balfour, et. al. created the Modern Middle East from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire at the same time that they created Northern Ireland.
        Beware gods with a sense of humor.

  • http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

    The NYT’s David Brooks says he can read Bush’s body language. Brooks is convinced, therefore, that Bush has no intention of attacking Iran, despite all the threats emanating from the White House.

    I feel so much better now, don’t you?

  • Teaeopy

    Efforts to keep enemies real and imagined, difficult allies, and uncommitted nations in a state of unease is nothing new, but I don’t recall a President in the last several decades who has done as much as George W. Bush has to make US citizens uneasy. He does so partly by intention, viewing it as advantageous to keep us afraid enough to be compliant and dependent, and partly out of indifference. He’s often been given the benefit of any doubt by Congress, by the business community, and by large portions of the public, and so he has not been concerned enough about the consequences of his behavior. Should Bush commence an offensive against Iran, there will be no hiding place, no way to avoid blame for the terrible events that would follow. Even if he were to ride out his second term, he’d leave his political party in a mess, and history would not treat him favorably. I’d rather that Bush be moved by duty and conscience, but those motives failing, maybe he’ll look to what’s left of his reputation. If that form of self-interest can keep him from taking us over the precipice, I hope he’ll grow more of it.

    • Teaeopy

      I should add: If George W. Bush thinks Jesus would rescue and reward him, he should study what Jesus said about the treatment of others.

      • PrchrLady

        AMEN…

      • Delia

        Study what Jesus said about the treatment of others? You must be assuming George W. Bush isn’t a self-absorbed sociopath or something.

      • prostratedragon

        “Worshipping” has nothing to do with listening or learning. Maybe it extinguishes them.

  • Bill Keyes

    I would like to ask a few simple questions.

    Why is it okay for the US to have thousands of nuclear weapons and Israel to have what 200, and Syria, Iraq, and Iraq not to have any?

    If having nuclear weapons means you are a threat, then why are Syria, Iran and Iraq are a threat and not the US or Israel.

    What gives us the right to decide who is a threat and who isn’t and who can have nuclear weapons and who can’t?

    For that matter, why does any country need nuclear weapons?

    Anyone???

    • Cee

      It isn’t okay for everyone to be armed to the teeth and expect Iran to be remain defenseless. They’d be foolish to stay that way!

      None of them are a threat. Tzipi Livni even said a NUCLEAR Iran didn’t threaten Israel. Has the liberal US media reported this?
      Nothing on Keith Olberman?

      http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/916758.html

      I’m sick of our racist foreign policy. So is the rest of the sane world.

  • http://www.deadtide.com Kyle

    Why no mention of the foreign insurgents coming from Saudi Arabia, or any of the problems coming out of there, like 15 hijackers, etc. ?

  • Graybeard

    I don’t think Communist China will let Bu$h attack Iran, and screw up a good source of oil. It’s the Golden Rule, and they have the gold. . $1.4 Trillion and growing.

    Russia, OTOH, probably wouldn’t mind a disruption of oil from Iran; they’re the competition.

    GB

    • Delia

      I think you’re wrong about Russia. Russia has a lot of shared interests with Iran. It’s in Russia’s traditional sphere of influence; it’s Russia’s closest access to a warm water port. Russia and Iran have been doing a lot of business in recent years, including over energy. Putin sees the US presence in the region as meddling in the Russian sphere of influence and therefore as intolerable.

      • http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

        Bush is putting our allies, Russia, China, et al in the position of having to choose between their allegiances/alliances with the US and their national interests, such as energy concerns.

        Something else that gets me, besides the irrational push to war, is the hypocrisy: US companies with foreign subsidiaries may still be doing business in Iran, such as Halliburton, Smith International, GE and dozens of others. The Bushies must all be salivating over the prospect of getting their hands on another OPEC member’s oil fields, assuming their plan to effect Iranian regime change goes forward and succeeds.

  • Jess Wonderin

    Bush thinks the rest of humanity lives in his “Bush World” where there is no cause/effect and only his vision of the voices in his head. He has lived a life of repetitive failure with other always bailing his sorry ass out (fiscally and literally) all his life. The snow job on Iraq worked so well, we are now in Mushroom Cloud II the Sequel . . . so he figures “$80 million in bunker busters” and we go home safe and sound????

    We may soon be longing for $95 a barrel oil . . . or be sitting in a cave waiting for someone to re-invent fire . . .

  • Mr.Murder

    So long as none of the oil from Iran reaches the EU or USA, Putin’s EU market share and Cheney’s domestic cartel are satisifed…

    war reamins one option, the mega trillion boondoggle known as Star Wars is what the proliferation intent should eventually yield.

    Rummy wants proliferation to some scale, see also North Korea, Pakistan.

  • ybnormal

    It would be easy to just sit here and say that the present WH is on some kind of power trip. But doing that would trivialize the thought. There’s more.

    Some opinion writers have commented that Bush won’t go to as much an extreme as people fear, because he will eventually take a view towards his legacy. But that all depends on what he really wants his legacy to be. It’s worth arguing that at the top of his legacy wish list, is something along the lines of a powerfull unitary executive.

    In line with that, are his un-precedented signing statements, his unconcern for polls, his tendency to start wars and his disrespect for the constitutional roles of Congress and the Judiciary. In other words, the power he wants for the executive is not the power to make progress through concensus, it’s just the opposite. It is an authoritarian form of power, which can only be gained by taking it over significant objection.

    Looking at it this way, it makes sense why low poll numbers are not a problem for Bush; rather they are an indicator of the power he has gained in spite of others.

    While excessive lust for power will eventually burn itself out, it will be at everyone’s expense. This is the fallacy of leaving impeachment off the table. To do so says you expect to negotiate with someone, who in fact has no interest at all in negotiating, because they simply don’t have the same priorities for concensus.

    • http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

      Very well said Ybnormal.

  • ybnormal

    Is Bush trying to start WWIII?

    If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

  • ybnormal

    Q: What’s worse than a president whose only tool is a hammer, and therefore to who everything looks like a nail?
    A: A president whose only tool is a hammer, and who because he’s dumber than a bag of hammers, over delegates decisions.

    Speaking of riddles, I’m reminded of a James Carroll Boston Globe op-ed from 12/11/06, still relevant called Desperate for answers to all-important Iraq riddle, which also has insight into Iran.

    IN MYTHOLOGY, when the ancients were desperate for an answer, they would present themselves to the Sphinx and ask their question. The Sphinx would reply with a riddle. The riddle would reveal the needed wisdom. But to go to the Sphinx was an act of desperation because, if you failed to answer the riddle correctly, the Sphinx would kill you.

    then further down

    So here we are before the Sphinx, with what seems an unsolvable problem. The war is killing our young. The war is devastating the people of Iraq. The war empowers the nihilistic fringe of Islam, which now threatens to ignite the entire Middle East. Because oil is at issue, the global economy is at risk. If America stays in Iraq, the violence will worsen. If America leaves Iraq, the violence will worsen. What can we do to stop this? Even after the Baker commission, no one knows.

    For a long time, the Sphinx just looks at us, the famous stare. Finally, the Sphinx offers up the riddle: “I took you into this war. Adjust your thinking about me, and I can bring you out. If you refuse to change, I will destroy you. What am I?”

    • taters

      Great post, yb.

  • justsomeone

    G Hazeltine, I got lost in the maze of the blogasphere earlier, finally found my way back & wanted to comment: Thanks for posting the sobering analysis by Jahangir Arasli. I suggest you forward it to Sen Jim Webb. This is some really scary stuff. I always wonder if we could of ended this madness back in the Reagan administration, when Webb was assistant Sec of the Navy, before it escalated to this point. That was the most ill thought out retreat in US history, but we were just too raw from Viet Nam. Wish we would of gone to alternative fuels 20/30 yrs ago..woulda, shoulda, coulda.

  • Charles

    I find it hard to believe that the constant drumbeat for war with Iran coupled with the number of actual preparations for war underway has anything to do with Iran’s support for terrorism, it’s nuclear ambitions, the ability of high-level neocons to believe in their own propaganda, Bush’s incompetence, protecting Israel, or any other explanation I have heard to date.

    It seems to be that we need to ask who would benefit from the evident outcome of such a attack. I cannot believe that the senior leaders of our government are unaware of the likely outcome of aggression against Iran, or that they are delusional. Given that all our recent aggressions (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia) are all in nations that are strongly connected to the oil industry, and that the consequence of engaging in these illegal and immoral adventures is extremely profitable to industries closely allied with the administration, a coherent explanation (IMHO) must take those facts into account.

    • PrchrLady

      Agree. Also, makes me want to see all the Energy Task Force Papers with an even greater passion.

  • taters

    Not only is attacking Iran wrong on so many levels – what would be the consequences on US forces in Iraq?
    Remember, it was the Mahdi army that defeated and killed General “Chinese” Gordon in Khartoum.

    Islamic History Sourcebook:
    Alfred Egmont Hake:
    The Death of General Gordon at Khartoum, 1885

    [Tappan Introduction] In I882 there arose in the Soudan, a province of Upper Egypt, one Mohammed Ahmed, who called himself the Mahdi or Messiah, and invited all true believers to join in a holy war against the Christians. Thousands of wild tribesmen flocked to his banner, and in the following year he annihilated an army of eleven thousand English and Egyptians that had attempted to subdue the revolt. Rather than send more soldiers to die in the deserts of the Upper Nile, England decided to abandon the province. But first the thousands of Europeans who had taken refuge in Khartoum and other towns of the Soudan must be rescued from their perilous position. In this crisis the Government turned to the one man who could effect the withdrawal if it was still possible, and in January, 1884, appointed General Gordon to superintend the evacuation of the Soudan

    http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/islam/1885khartoum1.html

    http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/on_iran_pat_lan.html

    http://nationalinterest.org/General.aspx?id=92&id2=12186

    http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0721/p09s01-coop.html

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