War is hell – are sanctions a better option?

Carah Ong, Iran policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington, D.C., has just written an article taking to task American policy towards Iran that was published in MERIP (Middle East Research and Information Project), entitled “War Is Peace, Sanctions Are Diplomacy“:

“The White House is pressing ahead with its stated goal of persuading the UN Security Council to pass far-reaching sanctions to punish Iran for refusing to suspend its nuclear research program. Sanctions are what President George W. Bush is referring to when he pledges to nervous U.S. allies that he intends to ‘continue to work together to solve this problem diplomatically’. The non-diplomatic solution in this framing of the ‘problem’, presumably, would be airstrikes on nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic. With its portrayal of UN and unilateral U.S. sanctions as part of a diplomatic effort, the Bush administration has successfully confused much media coverage of the Iranian-Western confrontation over Iran’s enrichment of uranium. Sanctions are punitive measures, not serious diplomacy, and the Bush administration has never undertaken a sustained diplomatic initiative aimed either at inducing Iran to cease enriching uranium or at soothing broader US-Iranian tensions. Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s persistent refusal to take military options ‘off the table’, combined with its intensified rhetoric against Iran, has made sanctions palatable to allies, as well as to some of the most dovish members of Congress and the American public — but without addressing the political disputes that keep the US and Iran on a collision course. Congress, by and large, has merely greased the skids.

“On September 28, the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — issued a joint statement, along with Germany and the European Union, agreeing to wait to discuss a potential third round of sanctions on Iran until International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana delivered progress reports on negotiations with Iran in November. No sooner had the IAEA released its November 15 report than the Bush administration renewed its push for stiffer penalties on the Islamic Republic. U.S. spokespersons seized upon the IAEA’s statement that Iranian cooperation with its investigators, while ‘sufficient’ and ‘timely’, has been ‘reactive rather than proactive’. This ‘reactive’ posture, along with Iran’s blockage of spot inspections of nuclear sites (as required by the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), made it impossible for the IAEA to assert that Iran’s program is geared exclusively toward peaceful generation of nuclear power, as Iran claims. The US dismissed the positive aspects of the Agency’s report. As State Department briefer Sean McCormack put it, “Partial credit doesn’t cut it when you’re talking about issues of whether or not Iran is developing a nuclear weapon” …

Ong’s analysis continues: “Behind both the White House and Congressional moves is the conviction that Iran, its protestations of peaceful intent notwithstanding, is trying to build an atomic bomb. On October 17, the president told reporters: ‘If you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon’. In a speech at a Washington Institute for Near East Policy retreat four days later, Vice President Dick Cheney worded it more strongly: ‘The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon’.

Is the US conviction about Iran justified? The IAEA does not think so. Its November 15 report concluded: ‘The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran’. The concern, as the UN watchdog acknowledged, is that Iran may be diverting undeclared material to a clandestine bomb-making effort, but there is no proof that such an effort exists. As Mohamed Elbaradei told CNN on October 28, there are “a lot of question marks. But have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can readily be used in a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No.”

“Just as the notion that sanctions and economic pressure are diplomatic tools is flawed, so too is the notion that the only strategic choices before the US are war or capitulation. Such was the false choice posed by the Bush administration with regard to Iraq. There is in fact a wide array of alternatives available to the US for resolving tensions with Iran, but the political will to get to the negotiating table has been lacking on both sides … The Bush administration has insisted that the international community place the Iranian nuclear issue on the front burner. Yet the US itself has not directly engaged Iran in negotiations, preferring to farm out direct contacts to the European Union. Since Iran does not pose an imminent threat to either the US or its allies, it is unlikely that Iran would evoke so much international concern minus US pressure. There is time, albeit limited, for the US to desist from its punitive measures and its threats of more to come, and to pursue bold and tough-minded direct diplomacy instead”.

Carah Ong’s critique of sanctions over diplomacy is here.