UANI Tube

Thanks to a friend at the WSJ, I got sent a notice saying United Against Nuclear Iran, said to be the brainchild of Richard Holbrooke, Dennis Ross, and James Woolsey, is running a new ad campaign:

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=339701&CategoryId=14090

The ad tosses out as evidence “Ahmenijhad acknowledges sanctions…..were hurting Iran’s economy- LA Times 9/23/08.” The original LAT article states (thanks to Lexis Nexis):

Ahmadinejad acknowledged that the sanctions, the global financial crisis and wars in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan were hurting Iran’s oil-fueled economy, which is beset by inflation, unemployment and shortages of gasoline.

If you’re Ahmadinejad, you emphasize the global financial crises and blame the U.S. (he blames U.S. military intervention for the economic crises earlier in the article). If you’re Kyl, Bayh, and Liberman, you emphasize “oil-fueled economy” and “shortages of gasoline” in hopes of getting your new bill passed. If you’re Barack Obama, you are probably worried economic sanctions give Ahmadinejad a platform to say “see we are playing by the rules of democracy and you respond with an adversarial tone.” At the same time, he will have start mulling over these type of sanctions ideas if his tough diplomacy fails, which would not be a huge surprise.

At the G8 conference this

Submitted by on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 2:25pm.

At the G8 conference this morning, Stephen Rademaker this morning correctly suggested that sanctions on Iran will be most effective if European nations join United States efforts and cut economic ties with Iran. While a few weeks ago the potential of harming the populace might have rallied the people around Ahmadinejad, the disputed election has discredited the president in the eyes of many Iranians, as Joseph Cirincione said today. Sanctions may no longer look like aggressive Western policies but the result of an illegitimate ruler’s disastrous rule.
We might hope, then, that effective joint sanctions could lead to the election of a president more willing to negotiate or even regime change resembling the fall of apartheid in South Africa.

Sanctions are, without

Submitted by on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 2:25pm.

Sanctions are, without question, problematic. However, that being said, consider the (perhaps simplified) spectrum of potential actions that are available in any crisis:

1) Do nothing
2) Talk
3) Sanction
4) Limited military action (cruise missile strikes or something on that level)
5) Full-fledged military action

So basically, the government is left with three tangible actions: do nothing, sanction, or use the military. The first is untenable, and the last, undesirable. As such, sanctions, however ineffective (and potentially damaging), become the crutch of the goverment when it needs to essentially make a statement and show that it is “doing something.”

I worry about sanctions

Submitted by on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 2:24pm.

I worry about sanctions because: (a) hurting Iran’s economy (oil-fueled or not), well, hurts Iran’s economy, i.e. its people, not the regime; and (b) bringing access to energy into the mix is a slightly dangerous precedent for the world’s number one importer of oil to set.