The European Union sanctions target Tehran, but more is needed
Fox News, June 30, 2008
Transcript
Early this week, finally, the
European Union (EU) adopted a new set of sanctions designed
to discourage the Iranian regime’s drive to develop nuclear
weapons.
These new measures include an asset freeze on Iran’s largest
bank, Bank Melli, and other business and financial outfits
affiliated with the nuclear and weapons programs. The
European bloc is reportedly also studying sanctions against
Iran's oil and gas sector, to be implemented in the next
several months, and has published a blacklist of Iran’s
nuclear experts and companies connected to these programs.
The list includes 15 additional individuals and 20
companies.
The EU’s latest sanctions is welcomed news and will no doubt
have an impact on the clandestine program, but they must be
augmented by a set of bold, new policy initiatives to be
effective.
True, the new measures, approved at a meeting of the
27-nation bloc in Luxembourg, signal the EU’s growing
frustration with Tehran’s continued foot-dragging and lack
of transparency. The frustration went through the roof after
the EU’s chief diplomat, Javier Solana, failed to induce the
ayatollahs to change course, despite a package of
incentives.
The EU measures also follow a recent U.N. Security Council
decision authorizing a third round of sanctions, freezing
the financial assets of additional Iranian officials and
companies with links to the country's nuclear and missile
programs. Separately, the United States has levied several
punitive financial measures against Tehran’s sponsorship of
terrorism in the region and in Iraq, and against its nuclear
and other weapons of mass destruction.
Last fall, Washington sanctioned Bank Melli, Bank Mellat and
Bank Saderat. The growing array of sanctions coming from
both sides of the Atlantic, raise a key question about the
effectiveness of such punitive measures. The short answer is
that, while not sufficient on their own, these unilateral
and multilateral measures have put a measurable squeeze on
Tehran’s financial flow. Equally important, they have been
instrumental in fueling the political disarray within the
regime.
In the past several months alone, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the
darling of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the
ayatollahs’ supreme leader, has fired his key cabinet
members in the financial and economic fields. The sudden
announcement of fuel rationing last summer turned Tehran and
other major cities into scenes of protest where — far beyond
the regime’s energy policies — the totality of the
ayatollahs’ regime was targeted. The politically-suppressed,
socially-suffocated and economically-deprived people burnt
down hundreds of state-run fuel pumps, chanting “death to
dictatorship.”
After these riots, a state-run daily, Etemad, acknowledged
that bread and butter issues have turned into major national
security problems for the regime. "It does not matter what
the event is; it could be the loss of the national soccer
team, sudden loss of electricity, the cutting off of
drinking water, or the sudden and unexpected rationing of
fuel ... they all can spark a riot ... although most of
these riots are put down after the security and military
agencies intervene, every act of subversion adds to the
collective memory of the people, who will use it as capital
or a learned experience for the next uprising," the paper
warned.
It is, therefore, evident that sanctions have an impact on
Tehran’s political and financial capabilities. The ruling
regime is extremely vulnerable, after being weakened by a
series of dismissals and factional rivalries. It is plagued
by an intrinsically dysfunctional theocratic system,
confronted with an increasingly defiant and
repression-resilient populace, and challenged by an
organized opposition. A European correspondent reported last
summer from Tehran that “Today, MEK is highly capable of
attracting the young people born and raised after the
revolution.”
On Monday, June 23, the British House of Commons and House
of Lords formally removed the MEK from the UK’s blacklist.
According to the Associated Press, the removal procedure is
now complete and the group is effectively off the list of
banned organizations in the UK.
To complement its new set of sanctions and gain effective
leverage in its campaign to defuse the nuclear threat posed
by the ayatollahs, many European parliamentarians are
pressing the EU to follow suit and immediately remove the
Iranian opposition from its own blacklist. In a
parliamentary debate that led to delisting of the Iranian
opposition in the UK on Monday, Lord Clarke of Hamstead
said: "It was clear that the lead given by the British
Government, which has now been proved to have been unlawful,
motivated other countries to put the PMOI [MEK] on the
European list. The Government should work now to redeem
themselves. They can do a penance by saying to our friends
in Europe 'We got in wrong'."
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
