US Sanctions Target Iran Central Bank

[AnCap Dave]

Source

This is from a radio broadcast, so the following quote will be a transcript of that broadcast:

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.

For this new year, Congress gave President Obama the power to impose new sanctions on Iran.

WERTHEIMER: The sanctions would target Iran's central bank. Though the president has some flexibility on the timing, the mere threat escalated tensions. Iranians have spoken of stopping oil tankers passing through the vital straits of Hormuz.

INSKEEP: And when a U.S. aircraft carrier steamed out of the Persian Gulf through those straits, Iran warned the carrier not to come back. Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says the sanctions would be a lot of pressure on Iran.

KARIM SADJADPOUR: The sanctions against Iran's central bank will be the most draconian sanctions passed against Iran since the 1979 revolution. It's essentially going to make it a lot more difficult to do business with Iran, whether that's to import Iranian oil and gas, which is the main source of Iran's income, or continue to export products to Iran.

INSKEEP: How much flexibility does President Obama have under the law to impose or withhold the sanctions?

SADJADPOUR: There's a good deal of flexibility. I think it's probably unlikely that we're going to penalize every single company and country which continues to do business with Iran. But again, the calculations are that if Iran loses its European market and it loses its Japanese and South Korean market, we're talking about 40-45 percent of Iran's petroleum export market. And it's unclear whether China, India, African countries, will be able to pick up the slack.

INSKEEP: If the United States were to impose the sanctions, if enough other countries and companies around the world were to go along if the sanctions would really take effect, would the United States do more damage to itself than it would to Iran? You'd be cutting off oil that's a big part of the world oil supply.

SADJADPOUR: And especially at a time when the state of the global economy, the state of the American and European economies, are so precarious. The hope is that Libyan oil will be back on the market come spring time or be back to status quo activity.

Saudi Arabia has already committed to increasing their output of oil. And Iraq also has a role, if an unwitting role, and that is to increase their oil output as well.

So Iran currently exports about 2.5 million barrels per day. The hope is that between Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Iraq, a decrease of Iranian oil from the global market isn't going to have a major ramification for the global economy.

INSKEEP: Now, we certainly get the impression that Iran is taking this seriously, given some of the noises that they've made in the last several days.

SADJADPOUR: The big question is whether this type of pressure that's being exacted now is the type of existential angst-inducing pressure on the Iranian regime to force it to make meaningful compromises on its nuclear program. The regime is probably more isolated than it's been since the 1979 revolution, facing incredibly disgruntled population at home. Their currency, right now, is in a downward spiral.

So a lot of things are going wrong for the Iranian regime. The question is whether they will see it in their interests to compromise in order to alleviate the pressure or they will see it in their interests to go for the nuclear finish line and obtain a bomb, thinking that if they actually get a bomb that's going to be a shield against outside pressure.

INSKEEP: Do you think that the issues are so great, the interests are so great for each country, that their governments really are willing to go to war if it comes to that?

SADJADPOUR: My concern is that for the hardliners in Tehran, a war, U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran, could actually be expedient for them in the domestic political context. An outside attack on Iran could prolong the shelf life of the Iranian regime.

So, I don't see it in the interests of the Obama administration to attack Iran, because this is an election year and an attack on Iran is going to skyrocket oil prices, which will be bad for the U.S. economy.

But I do see it in the interests of some of the hardliners who are currently ruling Iran to invite some type of attack in order to quell popular agitations and repair internal fractures.

INSKEEP: Karim Sadjadpour, thanks very much.

SADJADPOUR: Thank you, Steve.

INSKEEP: He's an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"If Iran doesn't attack us. We'll keep putting more and more sanctions on them until they do."
Then, the media will bill Iran as the instigating bad-guy, and we can pretend we have no choice but to launch a full-scale war!

[Ibrahim90]

I just love the irony in this though: the country's president, who is supposedly into justice, peace, and that other shit (and won a peace prize for it), is committing gross injustices and trying to coax a war. a war with a country that, while filled with douches in power, hasn't actually attacked anyone in its entire history as the theocracy/presidential hybrid abomination it is today, and only fought 1 war. and that was with Iraq as the aggressor.

[ebalosus]

"If Iran doesn't attack us. We'll keep putting more and more sanctions on them until they do."
Then, the media will bill Iran as the instigating bad-guy, and we can pretend we have no choice but to launch a full-scale war!

Yeah, because that is exactly what america needs, another trillion dollar war...

I just love the irony in this though: the country's president, who is supposedly into justice, peace, and that other shit (and won a peace prize for it), is committing gross injustices and trying to coax a war. a war with a country that, while filled with douches in power, hasn't actually attacked anyone in its entire history as the theocracy/presidential hybrid abomination it is today, and only fought 1 war. and that was with Iraq as the aggressor.

Like you, I love the irony of the situation as well  . I'm wondering now if they will recognise their mistake and retroactively retract the prize and give it to somebody more worthy

[evensgrey]

Source

This is from a radio broadcast, so the following quote will be a transcript of that broadcast:

"If Iran doesn't attack us. We'll keep putting more and more sanctions on them until they do."
Then, the media will bill Iran as the instigating bad-guy, and we can pretend we have no choice but to launch a full-scale war!

As a tactics, it can works quite well.  That's pretty much the capsule version of how the US got into WWII.  (Now, there's also a reasonable argument that the occurrence of WWII was made more or less inevitable by the incredibly ham-fisted way that the Versailles Treaty process abused so many countries, and we're STILL dealing with the aftermath of it in the Middle East, and we MIGHT be coming to the end of the fallout in Europe after over 90 years, but that's the mechanism by which the US got itself into the war.  Now, it was different in the sense that Japan was in the process of savaging more than one neighboring country at the time and Iran isn't doing anything overt right now, but it's still a matter of historical fact that Japan launched the entire campaign in December 1941 because they needed to replace the resources that the US had cut off supplying to them or capitulate to US demands, and capitulation wasn't politically possible.  I'm not sure it's politically possible for the Iranian government to capitulate to US demands, even if the US government can make a clear statement of what it wants.)

[Ibrahim90]

Like you, I love the irony of the situation as well  . I'm wondering now if they will recognise their mistake and retroactively retract the prize and give it to somebody more worthy

meh, these people likely won't, and frankly, it is too late; their reputation was already fucked as early as 1906. so yeah, it was only 5 years old and already a joke. I mean, here are some winners of the peace prize:

[spoiler]1906: Teddy Roosevelt(sky):a jingoistic dude who stole Panama, helped push a war on Spain, and wanting to enter WW1 earlier than we did.
1919: Woodrow Wilson: KKK supporter, and hypocrite who let the Germans get shafted, setting up WW2
1945: Cordell Hall (thanks to Shane for the addition).
1973: Henry Kissinger (again, thanks for Shane).
1979: Mother Theresa (srsly, the more you know, the less you will like her)
1994: Yasir Arafat (I'm Palestinian in origin, and I think this is unwarranted)
2007: Al Gore
2009: "Baraka" Barak Obama: Libya, Uganda, and of course, Iran.[/spoiler]

EDIT: ok, added a few more.

[MrBogosity]

There are a couple more you can add to the list, as I said back in an old blog post: http://www.shanekillian.org/blog/index.php?/archives/107-Thoughts-on-the-Nobel-Peace-Prize.html

[ebalosus]

People, don't worry, I'm sure they'll give this year's prize to Kin Jong-Un for, like Obama, not being his predecessor (sarcasm)

[Gumba Masta]

People, don't worry, I'm sure they'll give this year's prize to Kin Jong-Un for, like Obama, not being his predecessor (sarcasm)

Seriously, after Kissinger got one...
Would you really be surprised?

[Ibrahim90]

Seriously, after Kissinger got one...
Would you really be surprised?

I'd actually have a laugh, if I didn't remember the fact that he now controls a collection of ~24.05 million brainwashed/scared shitless slaves...uh, I mean, citizens, who are severely malnourished for the most part.

[ebalosus]

Seriously, after Kissinger got one...
Would you really be surprised?

No, not really. I'd probably be more surprised if they gave it to someone whom actually deserves it

[MrBogosity]

Seriously, after Kissinger got one...
Would you really be surprised?

That's actually the reason Tom Lehrer stopped doing political satire: at that point, he just couldn't make up any satire that was as ridiculous as the real thing.

[Ibrahim90]

That's actually the reason Tom Lehrer stopped doing political satire: at that point, he just couldn't make up any satire that was as ridiculous as the real thing.

you know, when your actions as a politician/nobel peace prize committee make a satirist retire, seek help.

[MrBogosity]

you know, when your actions as a politician/nobel peace prize committee make a satirist retire, seek help.

Especially one as genius as Lehrer.