Beware of hawks in sheep's clothing—or maybe it's dove's plumage. That's one thought that comes to mind in seeing an op-ed over the weekend about Iran titled “Don't Give Up on Sanctions” by Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz, even though these two authors are not ones to hide their hard-line hawkishness on Iran. Doesn't it sound reasonable and moderate that we should give less violent means a chance rather than jumping right into a war with Iran? Don't be fooled; Gerecht and Dubowitz are not proposing an alternative to war but instead preparing more of the battlefield for a later push for war.
The supposed sanctions they are supposedly recommending would involve pressuring European and most European energy companies not to buy Iranian oil (the pressure to come from the threat of not being able to do business in the United States). The idea is that other (mostly Chinese) companies “would have significant negotiating leverage with which to extract discounts from Tehran,” and the Iranian government would lose tens of billions of dollars in revenue. The idea is invalid. As Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution explained at a Congressional hearing at which Dubowitz pitched the scheme, “This sort of idea that somehow the Iranians can become a sort of niche market for only bad companies and bad countries to purchase crude oil from simply doesn’t reflect the realities of the international marketplace.” It is doubtful Gerecht and Dubowitz expect any such scheme ever to be implemented, especially given that policy makers and economists in the United States and other Western nations would realize its invalidity. So the proposal will never be put to the test. The two hawks can claim that it would have worked and that the failure to try it is one more instance of the pusillanimity of, as they refer elsewhere in their piece, “Western politicians who are fearful of higher oil costs and of being seen as too harsh on the Iranian people.”
Gerecht and Dubowitz do not clarify which of the possible objectives of sanctions their scheme supposedly would be pursuing. They do speak of “loosening” the Iranian regime's “hold on power.” But when they say elsewhere that “the objective of sanctions is to cause real economic pain in Tehran,” they say nothing about how that translates into loosening the regime's hold on power. If they instead are looking to change the regime's policies—about its nuclear program or anything else—they make no mention of the component that is essential for any sanctions regime to have a chance to work: diplomacy that points to an alternative route involving a change in policy and a lifting of sanctions. Instead, they rely on the repeated falsehood—which Dubowitz has asserted more explicitly and strongly elsewhere—that diplomatic means have been tried, exhausted and failed.
The most sincere sentence in the piece comes in the final paragraph: “Like President Obama's failed attempt [sic] at diplomatic engagement, sanctions are an unavoidable and necessary prelude to any more forceful action to stop Ayatollah Khamenei's nuclear ambitions.” Gerecht and Dubowitz are not pushing for launching a war against Iran now because they know Barack Obama does not favor one. Their task for now is to prepare the propagandistic groundwork for a big push for a war after, they hope, a different president enters office in 2013. Repeating the canard that diplomatic alternatives have been exhausted is part of that preparation. Another part is making the case the sanctions are not sufficient—supplementing the case as necessary with proposals for sanctions that would have no chance for working even if they were adopted. And each phase of the preparation, based on the unproven assumption that the advent of an Iranian nuclear weapon would be a terrible development, further fosters the impression that—as will be argued vociferously when the time for a big push for war comes—such a development really would indeed be terrible and must be prevented at all costs, even if “all costs” means a disastrous war. As usual with similarly minded Iran hawks, Gerecht and Dubowitz make no attempt to prove the assumption, relying instead on sheer repetition of it to inculcate the notion that it is true.
One has to wonder why anyone who has U.S. interests at heart would campaign for a war that would severely damage those interests. One also has to wonder why anyone still listens to the campaigners, given how much most of the same people discredited themselves by campaigning for an earlier blunder of a war in Iraq. But no wondering is necessary to see their current strategy, which is all too clear.
Comments
Paul, thank you for a thought provoking post. I had written on a similar topic a few months ago: http://original.antiwar.com/yousaf-butt/... Excerpt: "Conditions for lifting these sanctions go way beyond anything having to do with Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. The West has essentially painted itself into a corner with sanctions that were relatively simple to enact but will prove hard, if not impossible, to lift – no matter what Iran does with its nuclear program. The situation may – intentionally or not – become a prelude to war. For instance, the US sanctions can only be lifted after the President certifies to Congress "that the government of Iran has: (1) released all political prisoners and detainees; (2) ceased its practices of violence and abuse of Iranian citizens engaging in peaceful political activity; (3) conducted a transparent investigation into the killings and abuse of peaceful political activists in Iran and prosecuted those responsible; and (4) made progress toward establishing an independent judiciary." And – just in case those conditions were not unrealistically stringent and comprehensive – the President has to further certify that "the government of Iran has ceased supporting acts of international terrorism and no longer satisfies certain requirements for designation as a state sponsor of terrorism; and [that] Iran has ceased the pursuit, acquisition, and development of nuclear, biological, chemical, and ballistic weapons." Many US allies, such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, could not satisfy all these conditions. So even if Iran were to stop all uranium enrichment and dump all their centrifuges into the Persian Gulf, shutter their nuclear program entirely, and re-task all their nuclear physicists to work in Chocolate factories, Iran would still be sanctioned by the US Congress. The UN Security Council (UNSC) sanctions are only a little better than the unilateral US ones in that they have only marginally less impossible goals. "
As always a great article Paul. Yousaf you bring up wonderful points as well. This is just another runup to an Iraqui style invasion. It has all the same signatures of the Iraq war propaganda - it's disgusting. Disgusting how effective it is against the populace. Soon most Americans will be chanting for the assasination of Ahmendinajad and that we invade Iran to implement regime change (for the second time in that nation by our hands). so sickening.
I think Mr. Pillar is substantially wrong about the real motive behind this op-ed. Like so many other similar articles published elsewhere by the neo-cons I think they are primarily designed to give talking-points to the commentators and politicians who they've already got in their clutches, but who don't have the brains themselves to come up with justifications for their obedience to the neo-cons. Sort of like when William Kristol at the New Republic was the (sole) brain-trust of the Republicans, and after he'd articulate this or that position in a piece you'd see them all parroting the exact same line or argument damn near the next day. (Hey, you don't think Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain or etc. could think up any of this kind of stuff by themselves, do you?) Doesn't matter the substantive validity of what talking-points are being offered, when they turn out wrong there'll be new ones churned out for the rubes. Just so that they sound good at the time, like ... "the Iraq war will pay for itself!" Plus I think the two-fer for the neo-cons here is to put pressure on Obama to attack Iran soon given the political time-table and his consequent special susceptibility to pressure now. I see elsewhere for instance that Israeli DM Barak is indeed saying that "now" is the time to confront Iran. At any rate it ain't the substance of these things that's the point at all; it's just the endless, obsessive concentration on influencing the public narrative, man. The dialectrics of rhetoric... And man are they are good at it.