Informed Comment

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu moved from the far right to just the Right on Tuesday by bringing into his government the center-right Kadima Party, led by Shaul Mofaz.

Mofaz has been sharply critical of reported plans by Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak, to launch a go-it-alone military attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Mofaz is not opposed to military action against Iran in and of itself, but wants it coordinated with the United States. He last week aligned himself with the views of former Israel domestic intelligence head Yuval Diskin, who strongly opposed a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran and who attacked Netanyahu as erratic. Mofaz said, “Let President Obama handle Iran. We can trust him…”

Having Mofaz in the cabinet makes Netanyahu less dependent on extreme hawks, and makes it highly unlikely that Israel will act on its own against Iran. I say this despite some attempts of right wing Israeli and pro-Israeli outfits like the so-called ‘Washington Institute for Near East Policy’ (which should be ‘Tel Aviv Institute for Near East Policy) to spin the news by saying that the new government is not necessarily less hawkish on Iran. Of course it is! Since the saber rattling by Netanyahu was part of a psychological war with Iran, Jewish nationalist hawks can’t afford to have this simple reality stated.

Mofaz’s joining the government comes at a time of changing leadership in Europe. Francois Hollande, the new French president, is less hawkish on Iran than was Nicolas Sarkozy. And, Vladimir Putin is now president of Russia again, and has been far more outspoken in wanting to prevent a Western attack on Iran than was Dmitri Medvedev, who seemed to vacillate with regard to Tehran.

Netanyahu can now remain prime minister until scheduled elections in October of 2013. He had just the day before called for new elections, in part because his Haredim (Jewish fundamentalist) allies would not accept a new bill providing for Haredim to serve in the Israeli military, nor would they accept Netanyahu’s plans to demolish illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

Netanyahu therefore likely brought Kadima on board so as to be less beholden to Shas and other parties that strongly back the Haredim. Moreover, the extreme right in Netanyahu’s cabinet had blocked any serious negotiations with the Palestinians, putting Netanyahu in difficulties with the US & Europe, whereas Mofaz has a plan for moving forward on the Palestinian front, which he presented to Netanyahu on joining his government. (It is patronizing and unrealistic, but no one else in the government has even talked about the need to formulate a plan).

The coalition was made possible because Shaul Mofaz, who was born in Iran, had recently replaced Tzipi Livni as head of Kadima. Livni had refused to join a Netanyahu-led government. Mofaz is less rigid on the issue. Likewise Kadima was facing the loss of several seats if elections had been held. They would likely have been picked up by the Labor Party, which could have more than doubled its strength. Labor and the liberal Meretz Party were furious about the back room deal, which deprived them of a chance to grow the number of seats they hold.

Aljazeera English reports:

Posted in Iran, Israel/ Palestine | 9 Comments

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in India on Monday that New Delhi can reduce its oil imports from Iran further, pressuring that country to fall in line with unilateral US sanctions and Washington’s virtual blockade on the sale of Iranian petroleum. India, however, pushed back, saying it would maintain its trade ties with Iran. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered an offset to his disappointing message to Clinton, however, pledging that he would open up ownership of retail businesses to foreign firms (at the moment retailers have to be 51% Indian-owned). US retail corporations are eager to get into the Indian market. I apologize for citing the tabloid Daily Mail here, but actually its story is much better and more thorough than most American outlets, who don’t mention that Singh told the Secretary of State “no” on Iran. The USA Today actually spoke about Iran’s “nuclear arms program” (which Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says does not exist).

Also yesterday, a major Iranian trade delegation was in India, seeking to boost Iranian imports from India to $6 billion a year. Some Indian firms are afraid, but many see a rare opportunity here to expand their exports to Iran, filling the vacuum created by the increasing US and European Union trade boycott with that country. Those that are oriented in their trade to domestic markets or the rest of Asia might be especially bold in this regard.

Indian state-owned insurers are also stepping up to help insure the Iran-India oil shipping in the face of reluctance on the part of Western insurers.

So as to avoid having to use the international banking system, which the US Departments of State and the Treasury are bullying into declining to handle Iranian oil sales, Iran will accept rupees for much of its oil exports, and then recycle them back into India to purchase imports. The two are talking about trade in “agro and allied products, pharmaceuticals, engineering, shipping, banking, petroleum products polymer, textile, as well as e-commerce.”

Biased Western news outlets keep trumpeting that Iranian exports have fallen, presumably to shore up support for the unlikely idea that the US can unilaterally wish extra millions of oil onto world markets. Few bother to mention that they have fallen in the first two quarters of 2012 primarily because of an Iranian dispute with China over payment terms, delaying Chinese imports. But that dispute has been resolved. China’s oil imports are expected to rise 5% this year, and China will be back to importing a lot of Iranian petroleum soon. The Chinese are also about to deliver a new supertanker to Iran, the first of 12, which will increase Iran’s delivery fleet. And, Iran will accept Renminbi in payment for oil imported by China.

Alok Bansal has an excellent overview of Iran’s importance to India, and explains why Clinton’s pressure on PM Singh will almost certainly largely fail.

1. Iran is India’s gateway to Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Caspian Basin and the Caucausus since it is otherwise geographically blocked from these areas by Pakistan and China, its longstanding rivals. Some of these regions are resource rich, some are potential markets for Indian goods, and some are geostrategically important to India, a rising Asian power.

(modified from this site)

2. India’s Shiite Muslims and even Sunni Muslims reject the US boycott of Iran, and the ruling Congress Party has Muslims as one of its constituencies

3. India is growing rapidly economically and has very little in the way of hydrocarbons itself, and so is very thirsty for Iranian oil and gas.

Note that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are already pumping an extra 2.5 million barrels a day over what they were doing last year, and prices, while softening a bit on US and European slowdowns, are still historically high, suggesting that it will be very difficult for China and India to replace Iranian petroleum. The Sudan crisis has taken some supply off the markets and it could last a while.

Posted in India, Iran, Uncategorized | 18 Comments

GOP Vice-Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio on Wednesday called for unilateral US military action against Syria and Iran and blamed President Barack Obama for declining to send troops to Syria in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. He also said that in addition to sanctioning Iran, “We should also be preparing our allies, and the world, for the reality that unfortunately, if all else fails, preventing a nuclear Iran may, tragically, require a military solution.”

So Rubio is campaigning for the vice president slot in the Republican Party by promising to embroil our country in two major Middle East wars, and moreover to do so without the backing of international law. But this step is precisely the mistake George W. Bush made in Iraq, and it meant that the US was mostly on its own in fighting, dying and paying for that war. Syria is 2/3s the size of Iraq, and Iran is 3 times more populous, so Rubio is committing us not only to bear more thousands of war dead and badly wounded but also to spend trillions in distant Middle Eastern deserts.

The US now has a two-party system in which one party is systematically pledged to make the US an international outlaw, with all the immense costs that entails.

Meanwhile, the chief instigator of war with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has clearly lost the fight inside the Israeli security establishment and even among his own colleagues.

First, Israeli deputy premier and minister of intelligence and atomic energy Dan Meridor gave an interview with Aljazeera English in which he admitted that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never called for Israel to be ‘wiped off the face of the map.’

I made the same point in 2005 and was raked over the coals by the late Christopher Hitchens and his Neoconservative friends, and by Likudniks (Meridor is a member of the Likud Party!). My dispute with Hitchens was instanced as a reason I shouldn’t be allowed to teach in the History Department at Yale University, and Likud apparatchik-posing-as-historian Michael Oren also attacked me at that time (he was a visitor at Yale and is now Israeli ambassador to Washington). Ethan Bronner at the New York Times did a hatchet piece on my stance, concluding with no evidence that Ahmadinejad had said the words, and he even implied that I don’t know the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb in Persian. I have been grossly insulted many times in the press and cyberspace, but I mind that one most of all. And the Likudniks complained that I was on Aljazeera or cited it.

So now the deputy premier of Israel, 7 years later, admits publicly that I was right all along, on Aljazeera.

Worse for Netanyahu and Rubio, Israel’s military chief of staff, Gen. Benny Gantz, came out and said that Iranian leaders are rational actors and that they have no current nuclear weapons program, not having decided to go for warheads.

And, of course, I’ve been saying these things for years and vilified for it, but this is the Israeli Army chief of staff speaking now.

It seems obvious to me that Meridor and Gantz are attempting to box in PM Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, whom the Israeli officers and intelligence chiefs consider insane or at least ‘absolutely stupid’ on the Iran issue. Meridor completely pulled the rug out from under Netanyahu, who has quoted ‘wipe off the face of the map’ till he was blue in the face.

What Gantz said echoes the position of US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and of US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey. Netanyahu leaked vicious attacks on Dempsey, a shameful act for a supposed ally. Gantz inevitably depends heavily on the US Pentagon, and appears to have thrown in with Panetta and Dempsey against Netanyahu, both because the Obama administration wants him to, and because Israeli military and intelligence leaders are aware that a strike on Iran would potentially unleash a maelstrom in the Middle East with which Israel may not be well-equipped to deal in the absence of US backing (and Obama has made it clear there won’t be US backing). In part, Gantz’s statement, which undercut Netanyahu, may have been Dempsey’s revenge.

I should underline that I think Iran is often a bad actor in the Middle East, and agree its nuclear enrichment program should be watched like a hawk. I like Israel and Israelis and think they’d be much better off if they’d give the Palestinians the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and stop rampaging around stealing territory and launching fruitless wars. I don’t mind having been slammed for my stances; at least I won’t go to my grave with no one having noticed I was here. But I do mind that my prediction was correct, that unindicted felon and traitor Richard Bruce Cheney (much more guilty than Bradley Manning) has managed to clone himself in the next generation, and that if the Republicans capture the White House we could be back to unilateral wars in the Middle East. Our country is now stuck in a game of Russian roulette, and people like Rubio are the bullet in the chamber.

Posted in Iran, Israel/ Palestine, Uncategorized | 36 Comments

I’m told that MEMRI, which has its origins in Israeli military intelligence, has put out a statement doubting that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ever issued a fatwa forbidding nuclear weapons. (MEMRI claims to be a 501(c)3 non-profit but is actually an effort to cherry-pick Middle Eastern news to present the most negative face of the Arab world to Americans so as to prejudice them in favor of Israel; in this case it is just doing propaganda).

A Reddit.com contributor has effectively answered this piece of disinformation. This posting points out that the official IRNA news agency said in 2005,

“The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the Fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons.”

That this old posting has gone into the deep web and isn’t at the IRNA site is irrelevant. The fatwa was announced by IRNA and has been repeatedly reaffirmed by Khamenei.

Here is the US government transcription, published in 2005, of the relevant portions of the IRNA publication of the official Iranian statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Interestingly, the statement points to hydrocarbon-fueled global warming as one reason for which countries such as Iran need to turn to nuclear energy production:

“Iran Issues Statement at IAEA Board of Governors Meeting
Corrected version: added additional material after IRNA update
IRNA
Wednesday, August 10, 2005 T11:39:36Z
Journal Code: 2736 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: FBIS Transcribed Text
Word Count: 1,962

Vienna, Aug 10, IRNA — Iran is a nuclear fuel cycle technology holder, a capability which is exclusively for peaceful purposes, a statement issued by the Islamic Republic at the emergency meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) read here Tuesday evening.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued the fatwa (religious decree) that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons, it added…

“Madam chair, colleagues…

“The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the fatwa that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office just recently, in his inaugural address reiterated that his government is against weapons of mass destruction and will only pursue nuclear activities in the peaceful domain. The leadership of Iran has pledged at the highest level that Iran will remain a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT and has placed the entire scope of its nuclear activities under IAEA safeguards and Additional Protocol, in addition to undertaking voluntary transparency measures with the agency that have even gone beyond the requirements of the agency’s safeguard system.

“Nuclear energy is expected to become once again a primary source of energy, with the rising demand for oil and gas and the ensuing increase in the prices, which incidentally can sharply accelerate for any political provocation. We should add to this the concerns about the environment, and the world will have no alternative but to revert back to nuclear energy, at least for decades to come… ”
(Description of Source: Tehran IRNA (Internet Version-WWW) in English — official state-run news agency) …

Note also that among the major followers of Khamenei’s fatwas are Shiites of South Lebanon, especially Hizbullah. Hizbullah’s al-Manar news service carried on 13 April 2005 a repost of an item about official Iranian negotiator on nuclear issues, Hassan Rowhani, who met with the the Danish FM and:

“Rowhani stressed during his meeting with the Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller that obeying the fatwa of Khamenei ‘is more important for us than the articles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its additional protocol.’ He explained that the fatwa of the Guide forbids the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons, and that the fatwa is, in the Islamic Republic, an obligatory law.”

أكد روحاني خلال لقائه وزير الخارجية الدنماركي ستيغ مولر أن الأخذ بفتوى خامنئي «اكثر أهمية بالنسبة الينا من بنود معاهدة حظر انتشار الأسلحة النووية والبروتوكول الملحق بها». وأوضح روحاني أن فتوى المرشد تحرم إنتاج وتخزين واستخدام الأسلحة النووية، والفتوى في الجمهورية الإسلامية قانون ملزم.

As I said, the fatwa not only was issued, widely acknowledged by high officials of the Islamic Republic, and considered by them to be binding law, but it has been reaffirmed numerous times. Here is an item from the conservative Iranian news agency Mehr dated April 11, 2012:

“The fatwa that the Supreme Leader has issued is the best guarantee that Iran will never seek to produce nuclear weapons, Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani said on Wednesday.

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa declaring that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are all haram (prohibited in Islam).”

I think the head of the Iranian judiciary knows a little bit better whether Khamenei issued a fatwa than does a project of Israeli military intelligence.

But let me just add that it is important to understand what a fatwa is. In Islam the laity ask their clerics about how to follow Islamic law. The cleric replies with a considered opinion on the purport of the law, which is called a fatwa. In the Usuli school of Shiite Islam, deriving the law from the relevant sacred texts is achieved in part through the application to them of legal reasoning. That is, the law in some senses inheres in the mind of the jurisprudent. If he reconsiders a case and comes to a different, more mature conclusion later on, he is bound to reverse himself. His followers are bound to follow his most recent conclusions.

A high-ranking cleric appointed as a jurisconsult to the state, who gives official fatwas, is called a mufti. But any trained clerical jurisprudent can issue a fatwa. (The system is virtually identical in Judaism, where rabbis answer the questions of the faithful about halakha or Jewish law with responsa.)

So a fatwa is not like an American law that has to be published in the Congressional Record and in official law books. It is just the conclusion to which a cleric’s reasoning leads him, and which he makes known, even in a letter. In Shiite Islam, laypersons who follow a particular ayatollah are bound by his fatwas. When an ayatollah such as Khamenei delivers oral remarks in public, these have the force of a fatwa and are accepted as such by his followers. That is, Khamenei’s recent statement forbidding nuclear weapons in a speech is in fact a fatwa:

“the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

There is another consideration. Since Khamenei is not only an ayatollah but also the Supreme Leader, it may well be that this statement is actually more important than a fatwa. It may be considered a hukm or decree of the Supreme Jurisprudent (Vali-yi Faqih), who is charged with setting the legal framework of the Islamic Republic in accordance with revealed Islamic law. That may be what Rowhani meant when he told the Danes that the fatwa is a qanun or law.

(By the way, I wanted to say that my blog post refuting the charge by some analysts that Khamenei might be practicing ‘taqiyya’ or pious dissimulation was not intended as a slam against the NYT correspondent James Risen who reported that this argument was being made by some in the US intelligence community. Mr. Risen was just doing his job in giving us a description of the debate. He has done very brave reporting on, e.g. the Bush administration’s misuse of intelligence in the Iraq War, and has been targeted for legal reprisals by the government, and is admired by those of us who care about the integrity of US intelligence. I was just trying to show that those government analysts who took the taqiyya argument seriously were mistaken.)

Posted in Iran | 8 Comments

China’s official Xinhuanet news service is predicting that Iran will compromise with the 5 members of the UN Security Council plus Germany as they meet in Istanbul beginning on Friday. The Chinese news service points out that Iran is suffering 25% to 35% inflation at the moment. Moreover, the Iranian currency has fallen dramatically against the dollar, and 25 of Iran’s banks have been kicked off the SWIFT exchange under European Union pressure (the EU in turn acted because it is afraid of US sanctions otherwise.) Xinhuanet does not say that Tehran will just give in, but quotes an Iran specialist to the effect that they will give in on some small issues in hopes of getting the negotiation ball rolling.

China has every reason to hope for this outcome. It is being put in the uncomfortable position of being the chief country defying the United States over the latter’s unilateral boycott of Iranian oil. Other Asian countries are even hoping that China will insure, or arrange to have insured, the ships that will take the oil to Asian ports. European Union sanctions now rule out European companies doing the insuring.

It seems clear that Iran will not give up its civilian nuclear enrichment program, aimed and making reactor fuel for energy plants. But apparently the West will press Iran to give up its program of enriching uranium to 19.75% for its medical research reactor. Iran will likely also be pressed to abandon its nuclear facilities at that cave (Fordow) near Qom, since it is underground and cannot be easily bombed (though it can be inspected and has been inspected).

The flaw in the west’s case is that it is hypocritical as long as the Israelis have some 400 nuclear warheads. Asking Iran to surrender even a virtual nuclear capacity when its rival has a real one makes for difficult strategic calculations. It is hard to believe that India would agree to give up its nuclear weapons if Pakistan did not. And the US has had 20 years after the end of the war to end its own nuclear stockpile, since its Soviet foe no longer exists; but that has not happened. Iran doesn’t even have the nukes to give up, and probably cannot have them for a good ten years even if they decided they wanted them, which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei emphatically says they do not. But its civilian nuclear enrichment program probably is intended to provide some deterrence and it is not easy to understand why it would relinquish that deterrent capability for nothing in return from Israel.

The mothballing of the program to enrich uranium to 19.75% (for a medical research reactor given Iran by the US decades ago) maybe the easiest thing the Iranians could offer. Whether they will do so, and whether that will be enough to create a sense of forward momentum has yet to be seen.

Posted in Iran | 22 Comments

My essay, “Why Washington’s Iran Policy Could Lead to Global Disaster,” is out at Tomdispatch.com Go to that site for Tom Englehardt’s powerful introduction.

Why Washington’s Iran Policy Could Lead to Global Disaster
What History Should Teach Us About Blockading Iran
By Juan Cole

It’s a policy fierce enough to cause great suffering among Iranians  — and possibly in the long run among Americans, too.  It might, in the  end, even deeply harm the global economy and yet, history tells us, it  will fail on its own.  Economic war led by Washington (and encouraged by  Israel) will not take down the Iranian government or bring it to the  bargaining table on its knees ready to surrender its nuclear program.   It might, however, lead to actual armed conflict with incalculable  consequences.   

The United States is already effectively embroiled in an economic war  against Iran.  The Obama administration has subjected the Islamic  Republic to the most crippling economic sanctions applied to any country  since Iraq was reduced to fourth-world status in the 1990s.  And worse  is on the horizon.  A financial blockade is being imposed that seeks to  prevent Tehran from selling petroleum, its most valuable commodity, as a  way of dissuading the regime from pursuing its nuclear enrichment  program. 

Historical memory has never been an American strong point and so few  today remember that a global embargo on Iranian petroleum is hardly a  new tactic in Western geopolitics; nor do many recall that the last time  it was applied with such stringency, in the 1950s, it led to the  overthrow of the government with disastrous long-term blowback on the  United States.  The tactic is just as dangerous today.

Iran’s supreme theocrat, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly condemned the atom bomb and nuclear weapons of all sorts as tools of the devil, weaponry that cannot be used without killing massive numbers of civilian noncombatants.  In the most emphatic terms, he has, in fact, pronounced them forbidden according to Islamic law.  Based on the latest U.S. intelligence, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has affirmed that Iran has not made a decision to pursue a nuclear warhead.  In contrast, hawks in Israel and the United States insist that Tehran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program is aimed ultimately at making a bomb, that the Iranians are pursuing such a path in a determined fashion, and that they must be stopped now — by military means if necessary. 

Putting the Squeeze on Iran

At the moment, the Obama administration and the Congress seem intent on making it impossible for Iran to sell its petroleum at all on the world market.  As 2011 ended, Congress passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that mandates sanctions on firms and countries that deal with Iran’s Central Bank or buy Iranian petroleum (though hardship cases can apply to the Treasury Department for exemptions).  This escalation from sanctions to something like a full-scale financial blockade holds extreme dangers of spiraling into military confrontation.  The Islamic Republic tried to make this point, indicating that it would not allow itself to be strangled without response, by conducting naval exercises at the mouth of the Persian Gulf this winter.  The threat involved was clear enough: about one-fifth of the world’s petroleum flows through the Gulf, and even a temporary and partial cut-off might prove catastrophic for the world economy.

In part, President Obama is clearly attempting by his sanctions-cum-blockade policy to dissuade the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from launching a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.  He argues that severe economic measures will be enough to bring Iran to the negotiating table ready to bargain, or even simply give in. 

In part, Obama is attempting to please America’s other Middle East ally, Saudi Arabia, which also wants Iran’s nuclear program mothballed.  In the process, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has even had Iran’s banks kicked off international exchange networks, making it difficult for that country’s major energy customers like South Korea and India to pay for the Iranian petroleum they import.  And don’t forget the administration’s most powerful weapon: most governments and corporations do not want to be cut off from the U.S. economy with a GDP of more than $15 trillion — still the largest and most dynamic in the world. 

Typically, the European Union, fearing Congressional sanctions, has agreed to cease taking new contracts on Iranian oil by July 1st, a decision that has placed special burdens on struggling countries in its southern tier like Greece and Italy.  With European buyers boycotting, Iran will depend for customers on Asian countries, which jointly purchase some 64% of its petroleum, and those of the global South.  Of these, China and India have declined to join the boycott.  South Korea, which buys $14 billion worth of Iranian petroleum a year, accounting for some 10% of its oil imports, has pleaded with Washington for an exemption, as has Japan which got 8.8% of its petroleum imports from Iran last year, more than 300,000 barrels a day — and more in absolute terms than South Korea.  Japan, which is planning to cut its Iranian imports by 12% this year, has already won an exemption.

Faced with the economic damage a sudden interruption of oil imports from Iran would inflict on East Asian economies, the Obama administration has instead attempted to extract pledges of future 10%-20% reductions in return for those Treasury Department exemptions.  Since it’s easier to make promises than institute a boycott, allies are lining up with pledges. (Even Turkey has gone this route.) 

Such vows are almost certain to prove relatively empty.  After all, there are few options for such countries other than continuing to buy Iranian oil unless they can find new sources — unlikely at present, despite Saudi promises to ramp up production — or drastically cut back on energy use, ensuring economic contraction and domestic wrath. 

What this means in reality is that the U.S. and Israeli quest to cut off Iran’s exports will probably be a quixotic one.  For the plan to work, oil demand would have to remain steady and other exporters would have to replace Iran’s roughly 2.5 million barrels a day on the global market.  For instance, Saudi Arabia has increased the amount of petroleum it pumps, and is promising a further rise in output this summer in an attempt to flood the market and allow countries to replace Iranian purchases with Saudi ones. 

But experts doubt the Saudi ability to do this long term and — most important of all — global demand is not steady.  It’s crucially on the rise in both China and India.  For Washington’s energy blockade to work, Saudi Arabia and other suppliers would have to reliably replace Iran’s oil production and cover increased demand, as well as expected smaller shortfalls caused by crises in places like Syria and South Sudan and by declining production in older fields elsewhere.  

Otherwise a successful boycott of Iranian petroleum will only put drastic upward pressure on oil prices, as Japan has politely but firmly pointed out to the Obama administration.  The most likely outcome: America’s closest allies and those eager to do more business with the U.S. will indeed reduce imports from Iran, leaving countries like China, India, and others in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to dip into the pool of Iranian crude (possibly at lower prices than the Iranians would normally charge). 

Iran’s transaction costs are certainly increasing, its people are beginning to suffer economically, and it may have to reduce its exports somewhat, but the tensions in the Gulf have also caused the price of petroleum futures to rise in a way that has probably offset the new costs the regime has borne.  (Experts also estimate that the Iran crisis has already added 25 cents to every gallon of gas an American consumer buys at the pump.)

Like China, India has declined to bow to pressure from Washington.  The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which depends on India’s substantial Muslim vote, is not eager to be seen as acquiescent to U.S. strong-arm tactics.  Moreover, lacking substantial hydrocarbon resources, and given Singh’s ambitious plans for an annual growth rate of 9% — focused on expanding India’s underdeveloped transportation sector (70% of all petroleum used in the world is dedicated to fuelling vehicles) — Iran is crucial to the country’s future.  

To sidestep Washington, India has worked out an agreement to pay for half of its allotment of Iranian oil in rupees, a soft currency.  Iran would then have to use those rupees on food and goods from India, a windfall for its exporters.  Defying the American president yet again, the Indians are even offering a tax break to Indian firms that trade with Iran.  That country is, in turn, offering to pay for some Indian goods with gold.  Since India runs a trade deficit with the U.S., Washington would only hurt itself if it aggressively sanctioned India.

A History Lesson Ignored

As yet, Iran has shown no signs of yielding to the pressure.  For its leaders, future nuclear power stations promise independence and signify national glory, just as they do for France, which gets nearly 80% of its electricity from nuclear reactors.  The fear in Tehran is that, without nuclear power, a developing Iran could consume all its petroleum domestically, as has happened in Indonesia, leaving the government with no surplus income with which to maintain its freedom from international pressures. 

Iran is particularly jealous of its independence because in modern history it has so often been dominated by a great power or powers.  In 1941, with World War II underway, Russia and Britain, which already controlled Iranian oil, launched an invasion to ensure that the country remained an asset of the Allies against the Axis.  They put the young and inexperienced Mohammed Reza Pahlevi on the throne, and sent his father, Reza Shah, into exile.  The Iranian corridor — what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called “the bridge of victory” — then allowed the allies to effectively channel crucial supplies to the Soviet Union in the war against Nazi Germany.  The occupation years were, however, devastating for Iranians who experienced soaring inflation and famine.

Discontent broke out after the war — and the Allied occupation — ended.  It was focused on a 1933 agreement Iran had signed with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) regarding the exploitation of its petroleum.  By the early 1950s, the AIOC (which later became British Petroleum and is now BP) was paying more in taxes to the British government than in royalties to Iran for its oil.  In 1950, when it became known that the American ARAMCO oil consortium had offered the king of Saudi Arabia a 50-50 split of oil profits, the Iranians demanded the same terms.

The AIOC was initially adamant that it would not renegotiate the agreement.  By the time it softened its position somewhat and began being less supercilious, Iran’s parliamentarians were so angry that they did not want anything more to do with the British firm or the government that supported it. 

On March 15, 1951, a democratically elected Iranian parliament summarily nationalized the country’s oil fields and kicked the AIOC out of the country.  Facing a wave of public anger, Mohammed Reza Shah acquiesced, appointing Mohammed Mosaddegh, an oil-nationalization hawk, as prime minister. A conservative nationalist from an old aristocratic family, Mosaddegh soon visited the United States seeking aid, but because his nationalist coalition included the Tudeh Party (the Communist Party of Iran), he was increasingly smeared in the U.S. press as a Soviet sympathizer.

Continue reading at Tomdispatch.com

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For those who missed this this weekend.

The intrepid Seymour Hersh reports at the New Yorker that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) of the US military gave members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK or People’s Holy Jihadis) training in signals intelligence at a facility in Nevada during the Bush era. The MEK was then and is now on the US State Department’s terrorism watch list, so the Pentagon’s deployment of this group was quite illegal.

The MEK was given a base in eastern Iraq by Saddam Hussein, who used the some 4,000 guerrillas who gathered there to harass the Islamic Republic of Iran. The MEK had its origins in an Islamic-Marxist guerrilla group of the 1970s that fought the forces of the Shah. It joined in the revolution against the Shah in 1978-79 but broke with the Khomeini regime and turned to a massive campaign of bombing and sniping against it. In return, the regime killed some 10,000 suspected MEK members, many of whom it just shot down in the street. The group evolved into a political cult, with insistence on glaze-eyed absolute obedience to the leader, Maryam Rajavi, and cult-like practices such as forced marriages and divorces (not to mention the long history of violence inside Iran).

When the US occupied Iraq, some in the Pentagon adopted the MEK at Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border for use against Iran. The MEK has bought a lot of big American politicians and seems to have promised the Israelis it would recognize Israel if it ever came to power in Iran; figures connected to the Israel lobbies have hypocritically campaigned to have the MEK delisted as a terrorist organization, despite it long and bloody record of attacks on civilians. As recently as this year, NBC quoted unnamed US government officials alleging that the MEK has been assassinating Iranian scientists in Iran.

Hersh reveals a trail of blatant hypocrisy on the part of the US government. “Our” terrorists are not terrorists even if they have blown up non-combatants, but national liberation groups such as Hizbullah in Lebanon are designated terrorists. Government officials have even brandished the word “terrorism” to describe perfectly peaceful protesters and dissidents inside the US, while JSOC was flying dyed-in-the-wool terrorists to Nevada for training.

The USG Open Source Center translated a report in the MEK newspaper regarding the hobnobbing of Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton and others with the MEK leadership in Paris recently:

“– On 24 March, the NCRI secretariat website published a report on an international conference held in Paris to address MEK concerns and issues, which was attended by NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi as well as former high ranking officials from the United States and Europe including Rudy Giuliani, Tom Ridge, John Bolton, Patrick Kennedy, and Colonel Wesley Martin.. According to the report, the issues raised included the adoption of a “decisive policy” against Iran’s regime, protection of the rights of Camp Ashraf and Liberty residents, and the elimination of MEK’s “terrorist label.” Rajavi said that “the only way to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb or the occurrence of an unprecedented conflict” was “regime change” by the Iranian people and resistance. On the issue of Camp Liberty, Rudy Giuliani said: “Let us go there. Let us see it with our own eyes.” He added: “Currently the enemy of stopping Iran becoming nuclear is appeasement. This wrong perception has made Iran more determined in becoming nuclear. Let us stop appeasement. Let us stop the efforts for negotiations. Stop writing letters to the ayatollahs. Let us rise up and say as Americans that we are for regime change in Iran and we will take every step necessary to stop Iran becoming nuclear” (National Council of Resistance of Iran in Persian — Website of an exiled political umbrella coalition of Marxist and Islamist organizations — Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO), National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA), People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and Muslim Iranian Students Society (MISS); on US State Department’s list of terrorist groups since 1997; URL: http://www.iranncr.org/).”

As Sheila Musaji points out, lots of American Muslims are in jail for ‘material support of terrorism,’ but American politicians and pundits get a free pass for actively supporting the MEK– which, remember, is definitively on the terrorism watch list.

Note to the US government and the Neocons: George Orwell’s 1984 was a dark political satire, not a blueprint for how you should do things.

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