Fishing for a Pretext to Squeeze Iran

By Juan Cole

Iran threatened last week to use the oil weapon if the United Nations Security Council imposes sanctions on the country because of its nuclear research program, promising “harm and pain” to the United States. In addition to consumer anxieties about oil prices, rumors of a planned U.S. or Israeli airstrike on Iran keep flying, and neighboring Iraqi Shiites have threatened reprisals if that is done to their brethren. What is driving the crisis between the Bush administration and Iran and ratcheting up the rhetoric? Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said on Friday, “If sanctions are imposed, we will definitely use the oil tool and other tools and we will stop at nothing.” The regime is clearly fearful of an international economic boycott, but feels it has its own advantages in the struggle. With increasing demand from India and China and instability in Nigeria and Iraq, Iran’s crude oil exports are important in maintaining an affordable price, especially in the winters. In some ways, by invading Iraq and destabilizing it, as well as fostering the rise of Shiite religious parties in Baghdad, the Bush administration has inadvertently strengthened Shiite Iran’s hand. Although the doubling of petroleum prices in the past two years has so far been absorbed by the world economy, many analysts are convinced that if the price went up to $75 a barrel and stayed there for two years, it would add significantly to the underlying rate of inflation and begin subtracting 2.5% a year from world growth. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chimed in with regard to the American threats: “They know that they are not capable of causing the least harm to Iranian people. They will suffer more.” From cbc.ca Related Links “Bush Ties Iran to Roadside Bombs in Iraq" (March 13, 2006) The president asserts that many of the improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have proved so deadly to U.S. forces in Iraq, originate in Iran.(March 13, 2006) Washington Post article about Bush’s attempt to build opposition to theocracy in Iran.“New ‘Cold War’ Looms with Iran" (March 13, 2006) BBC article on how the U.S. relationship with Tehran is starting to resemble its pre-1989 relationship with the U.S.S.R.“Britain Wants to Leave the Door Open to Negotiate With Iran" (March 13, 2006) Britain’s foreign secretary, Jack Straw, says that any U.N. pressure on Iran should be “incremental” and “reversible."“Russia Accuses Iran of Blocking Nuclear Diplomacy" (March 13, 2006) Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, says “Iran is absolutely no help to those who want to find peaceful ways to solve this problem."Iran is a mid-size country of some 70 million, with a per capita income of only about $2,000 a year. It has no weapons of mass destruction, and its conventional military forms no threat to the United States. From an Iranian point of view, the Americans are simply being unreasonably aggressive. Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei has given a fatwa or formal religious ruling against nuclear weapons, and President Ahmadinejad at his inauguration denounced such arms and committed Iran to remaining a nonnuclear weapons state. In fact, the Iranian regime has gone further, calling for the Middle East to be a nuclear-weapons-free zone. On Feb. 26, Ahmadinejad said: “We too demand that the Middle East be free of nuclear weapons; not only the Middle East, but the whole world should be free of nuclear weapons.” Only Israel among the states of the Middle East has the bomb, and its stockpile provoked the arms race with Iraq that in some ways led to the U.S. invasion of 2003. The U.S. has also moved nukes into the Middle East at some points, either on bases in Turkey or on submarines.

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