The Skeptic الشكاك

768 The Limits of Sanctions on Iran

My former Farsi teacher, Kouross Esmaeli, argues (with Ramin Karimian) that the sanctions on Iran are not having the desired effect:

While the US pressures do pose a nuisance, they are in no way destabilizing the regime. In fact, for the section of the Iranian ruling elite who advocate greater independence from the West, such pressures are only further proof of US injustices. Moreover, the US economic sanctions, putting a Western face on the structural roots of Iran’s economic problems, create a greater opportunity — an impetus as well as an excuse — to advance their domestic and international agenda. So, even as the sanctions compound the changes Iran’s economy is going through, the Iranian government is capable of managing their impacts.

The full article contains some useful reporting from Tehran, as well as this analysis of current Iranian politics:

Despite his image in the West, this is the primary role that President Ahmadinejad is playing inside Iran: he is using the autocratic and repressive state apparatus to privatize public industries, weaken labor laws, and take away government subsidies. He is, of course, doing so with an eye on building a stronger base for the regime and for his own re-election campaign next year. And in that sense, Ahmadinejad is becoming a double-edged sword for the leadership of the Islamic Republic. He is at once re-mobilizing some of the popular support for the regime and building a base for himself in order to operate as independently as possible. He recently voiced frustration at the limitations on the powers of the President to implement his vision, the same frustration that former President Khatami expressed a few years ago and was denounced widely as being out of step with the regime. So, while Supreme Leader Khamenei has proclaimed his pleasure at President Ahmadinejad’s strong stand against the West and has even hinted that the President should expect to be re-elected to a second term next year, establishment politicians such as former President Rafsanjani and former Speaker of the Parliament Nategh-Nouri have deepened their criticism of Ahmadinejad, his economic policies, and his attempts at repressing competitors.

In this process, one of the interesting outcomes of Ahmadinjead’s leadership is the fact that a layer of the ruling (and relatively more liberal) clerics are being marginalized at the hands of lay technocrats. Many of these technocrats are veterans of the Iran-Iraq war, and they see themselves as, once again, picking up the banner of the Islamic Revolution from the indolence-prone mullahs. They hope to further the independence of Iran while supporting other developing countries suffering under Western imperialism. The nuclear program plays the ideological role of buttressing this sense of independence, and there are no forces inside Iran who are allowed to openly disagree with it. Because of the West’s choice to ignore the Khatami presidency’s desire for rapprochement, President Ahmadinejad can say his own strong stand against the Western pressures is the only way to deal with Iran’s adversaries. And as far as the Iranian establishment is concerned, he has been proven right. The current negotiations between the West and Iran have come to allow Iran a lot more leeway than those under President Khatami, whose nuclear negotiation team was willing to accept the West’s preconditions before starting dialogue. The West rejected President Khatami’s overture, whereas President Ahmadinejad can point to his own success at bringing the West to the negotiating table under more favorable and just terms for Iran.

Interesting. I frankly don’t know enough to comment, but I’m curious to hear better-informed readers’ responses…

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