Will It Make A Difference?
The major powers finally agreed on a watered-down sanctions package to send to the UN Security Council yesterday, but it’s hard to imagine this slap on the wrist deterring Iran:
The proposed Security Council resolution includes a ban on Iranian arms exports, an assets freeze on individuals and firms involved in Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and a call to nations and institutions to bar new grants or loans. A copy of the document was obtained by Reuters.
A key element of the agreement is an expanded list of individuals and entities subject to financial restrictions, such as firms owned by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp. and the state-owned Bank Sepah.
The miracle is that anything at all got past the intransigent Russians. I suppose when you’re served lemons, you make lemonade, but meanwhile, the mullahs get that much closer to nukes…
One Response to “Will It Make A Difference?”
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- Weekly Jackasses
March 16th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Best case scenario, the sanctions will have the same effect on Iran that the sanctions had on Iraq, which is to say it won’t deter their quest for nukes in the lease, but it may deter their ability to acquire the materials needed to develop their arsenal (if the Iranians have to purchase materials on the black market they will find themselves with many of the same quality control problems Saddam did and, like Saddam’s Iraq, a slew of underlings who found it safer to lie to the big boss about the progress rather than finding themselves thrown in the plastic shredder). Moreover, the Iranian people themselves are quite restless and there are genuine opposition movements in Iran, so merely slowing Iran down might be enough.
The big problem with the optomistic scenario, though, is that there will be no way to verify whether its working. We’ll either wake up one morning to see Iranian people dancing on rooftops and burning effigies of Khameni, et al., or wake up to a mushroom cloud over, say, Jerusulem with an explicit threat of more to come.