The question of sanctions against Iran
is certainly not a new one. In some respects sanctions have been
part of the response -- and part of the problem -- ever since the
Islamic Revolution in 1979. Financial wranglings growing out of the
hostage crisis exacerbated an already strained relationship. This
article (below) deals with the sanctions regime of recent years, but
of course the author could not then have foreseen how much many new
elements would be have been added by the U.S. Government and its
allies between 2007 and the present.
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on
Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor
of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State
University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in
national security policy from George Washington University. He has
been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute,
Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office,
Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S.
General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign
Affairs Committee.
Ratcheting Up Sanctions on Iran Is the
Wrong Approach
March 26, 2007
The conventional wisdom for dealing
with Iran is demanding repeatedly that the Iranians end their uranium
enrichment program, and slapping on new sanctions. Although the
December 2006 United Nations Security Council sanctions that banned
countries from exporting nuclear and missile materials and technology
to Iran probably were prudent, widening the sanctions outside the
nuclear and missile areas is a mistake.
Broadening the sanctions changes
their main purpose from being instrumental to being merely punitive.
Although any kind of sanction is prone to evasion, an instrumental
embargo which attempts to deny Iran the materials and technology
needed to make a nuclear weapon and to deliver long distances via a
missile could at least slow Iranian acquisition of such ingredients,
or raise the price to do so. A comprehensive ban on weapons sales,
cutting off loans to the Iranian government, and freezing the assets
of important Iranian individuals and institutions have little to do
with keeping Iran from getting nuclear and missile materials and
technology. Thus, widening the measures beyond this narrow purpose
turns sanctions into punitive symbolism.
Such punishment seems misplaced when
no conclusive proof yet exists that Iran has an illegal nuclear
weapons program. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has
a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Although there are
reasons to suspect that Iran has an illegal nuclear weapons program,
it has not been proven.
Unfortunately, permanent members of
the U.N. Security Council—their own sizeable nuclear arsenals being
their major qualification for membership in the body—seem in the
eyes of many nations to be hypocritical for seeking to deny Iran a
nuclear capability. The United States’ credibility was further
reduced when it cut a deal to provide nuclear fuel and technology to
India, a state with nuclear weapons which has refused to sign the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Also, the United States provides
billions in assistance to its allies Israel and Pakistan, both
nuclear weapons states which have also spurned the treaty.
For these reasons, U.S. leadership in
the U.N. Security Council to punish the Iranians for ostensibly legal
activities creates a “rally-around-the-flag” effect in Iran.
Although not as pronounced as it would be if the United States were
to conduct air strikes against Iran, sanctions do allow the Iranian
regime to create an external enemy in order to win more support from
Iran’s restive, youthful population, which is disaffected with the
Iranian government’s austere Islamic rule.
Moreover, any broader measures
intended to commercially isolate Iran from the world would be a move
toward shutting off the very ideas that could eventually topple the
despotic regime. Ideas subversive to the regime’s hold on power
accompany Western products and technologies into Iran.
Even many opponents of U.S. military
action against Iran approve of broader sanctions as an apparent
substitute for war. History shows, however, that sanctions can
instead lead to war. Once the punitive road is selected, when
sanctions fail—as they often do—to have the desired effect on the
target country, pressure for military action can intensify. Two
examples spring immediately to mind. When stringent financial
sanctions against the Panamanian regime of Manuel Noriega
embarrassingly failed to depose him, President George H.W. Bush then
felt overwhelming pressure to oust him militarily—which he did,
through an invasion of Panama in 1989. That same president went to
war with Saddam Hussein in 1991, when the most comprehensive and
grinding sanctions in world history failed to compel Saddam to
withdraw Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Thus, starting down the road of
broader punitive sanctions may lead ultimately to war with Iran.
Instead, Iran should be given
positive incentives to forgo its nuclear weapons program. If the
Iranians forswear their uranium enrichment efforts, the United States
should offer to reintegrate Iran into the world, economically and
politically, and sign a pact pledging not to attack that nation.
Given that Iran lives in the vicinity of a nuclear Israel, and has
other potentially hostile neighbors, even this offer may not make the
Iranians willing to give up their nuclear program.
As the United States accepted and
deterred a nuclear China in the 1960s, when radical Mao Zedong was at
its helm, it may ultimately have to accept and deter, with the
world’s most potent nuclear arsenal, a nuclear Iran. History shows
that when countries get nuclear weapons they usually moderate their
behavior—for example, China, India, and Pakistan have become more
responsible internationally after going nuclear. Like the governments
in these other countries, the first aim of the Iranian regime is to
survive and stay in power. Threatening a superpower with thousands of
warheads would put that important goal at risk.
In sum, a strategy of negotiation
with positive incentives, and deterrence if that fails, is superior
to broad, punitive sanctions that only make the autocratic Iranian
regime stronger.
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