Hitting brick walls: Iran brooks another year of U.S. economic terrorism

By Yuram Abdullah Weiler

“We have now, for a full year, tried to find banks that are able and willing to transfer money from donors to support our work for Afghan refugees and disaster victims in Iran, but we are hitting brick walls on every side.” —Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland

A year has passed since the despotic Trump regime re-imposed punitive economic sanctions on Iran, forcing ordinary Iranians to endure unconscionable personal hardships, including watching loved ones die due to shortages of crucial drugs. While the U.S. claims to have made exceptions for humanitarian goods such as food and medicines, in practice, banks refuse to risk provoking Washington’s wrath and being fined on account of secondary sanctions. 
 
The coercive unilateral economic sanctions imposed by the United States on the Islamic Republic of Iran were relaxed to some degree under the JCPOA, the so-called Iran nuclear deal, but U.S. president Trump rashly pulled out of the agreement on May 8, 2018. The former reality TV host then gleefully announced that these harsh measures, which are illegal under international law, would be re-imposed in two 90-day increments, and fully in effect by November 4, 2018. President Rouhani did not mince words, and calling the sanctions for what they are, declared, “The U.S. pressures on firms and banks to halt business with Iran is one hundred percent a terrorist act.” 

“We are not looking for regime change,” Trump has insisted emphatically, “We are not looking for that at all.”  Yet despite his prevaricating pontification, the intent of U.S. economic terrorism against Iran is regime change, as was made abundantly clear by secretary of state Michael Pompeo. “Things are much worse for the Iranian people,” exuded the corpulent politician, “and we are convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime.”  The Iranian Foreign Ministry, however, disagreed. “The unlawful sanctions imposed by the US will not bring about the results it is looking for,” wrote the ministry in a statement, “But they do harm economies, and they do harm people, both Iranian and others.” 

Refugees, for example, are particularly vulnerable, and Iran, much more so than the U.S., has done a yeoman’s job of caring for refugees ever since its inception.  Iran has hosted more than 3 million Afghan refugees, who had been forced to flee their homeland as a result of U.S.-incited wars in Afghanistan beginning with the CIA’s Operation Cyclone in July 1979, and continuing to this day. “Refugee families are already skipping meals due to the growing economic crisis,” said Secretary-General of the NRC Jan Egeland, “They are selling the few assets they have to cover basic costs.” In addition, the Islamic Republic has had to deal with the victims of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, which in March 2019 affected tens of thousands of Iranians. However, because of the economic terrorism of the U.S. sanctions, the Iranian Red Crescent was unable to receive €3million in cash donations to aid flood victims.  

Sharply condemning this criminal behavior perpetrated by the U.S., Idriss Jazairy, the UN Special Rapporteur concerned with the negative impact of sanctions, stated, “The resort by a major power of its dominant position in the international financial arena against its own allies to cause economic hardship to the economy of sovereign States is contrary to international law, and inevitably undermines the human rights of their citizens.”  Denouncing what he rightfully termed “U.S. genocidal economic terrorism,” Iranian Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Eshaq Al-e Habib pointed out, “Within the last four decades, the U.S. has imposed unilateral coercive measures on the Iranian people at an increasing rate.”   

And why has Iran been subjected to this ongoing U.S. attempt at economic asphyxiation for more than 40 years? The reason is simple: because the Iranian people had the audacity to overthrow Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the U.S.-imposed dictator. The same holds true in the case of Cuba, where U.S. sanctions have been in effect since Fidel Castro ousted the U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista, in January of 1959. While Trump’s thugs have pushed unrestrained U.S. unilateralism to record levels, previous Washington regimes have done their part to destabilize and create chaos in the Middle East and much of the rest of the world, for that matter. In sharp contrast, the Islamic Republic of Iran strives to be a responsible state and a stabilizing power in the region. 

On Thursday, November 7 and again on Friday, earthquakes have once again struck Iran in the country’s East Azerbaijan Province northeast of Hashtrud, resulting in at least six deaths and over 300 injured.  Two years ago in November 2017, before Trump shredded the JCPOA, a far more lethal earthquake struck Iran in Kermanshah Province near the town of Sarpol-e Zahab, killing over 500 Iranians and injuring some 7,400 others. Even then, the criminal U.S. regime prohibited individuals from donating money directly to non-U.S. charitable organizations for the specific purpose of using the money in relief efforts to aid Iran’s earthquake victims.   

To demonstrate that categorizing U.S. sanctions as “genocidal” is not at all extreme, consider the case of dietary formula for infants with food allergies. In May 2011, the price of this formula skyrocketed 14 times, so the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, taking a lesson from the previous round of U.S. sanctions, set up a database to register those infants needing special formula so as to ensure a sufficient supply for at least ten months. However, the two-month supply of ordinary infant formula, anticipated to be adequate by officials, was sold out in four days due to buyers’ fears of future shortages.   

While Iran subsidizes essential medicines and dietary products and has near universal health care, administrators cannot be expected to plan for every contingency that could arise as a result of Washington’s genocidal whims. Helicopters are vital to rescue flood victims and a severe shortage of serviceable aircraft due to U.S. sanctions has severely hampered relief operations in the flood-stricken regions of Iran. Seyed Alireza Marandi, M.D., President of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Iran, in a letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres in November 2018 asked, “When will the lives of children, and women and men across the globe be protected from the criminal behavior of the United States?” 

We have indeed hit the brick walls of U.S. economic terrorism. These brick walls, which have been under construction since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, must be demolished using any and all means before another year passes by. How many more outrages committed by Trump and his henchmen will it take for us, the concerned and caring people of nations of the world, to join together and put an end to this criminal regime in Washington?

Iran’s potentials despite economic sanctions must be realized eventually

By Martin Love

NORTH CAROLINA - From afar one can’t help thinking about how lucky Iran really is in many respects. I mean this sincerely.

Sure, the economy over the past year has dropped nearly 10 percent, according to some economists, and Iran’s people are hurting as they watch whatever standard of living they had decline while inflation has taken a toll and put out of reach many of the goods, especially luxury goods, average people want, even if – probably – the economic problems have not much impacted Iran’s elite.  And the reasons for the declines over the past year have mostly but not exclusively been attributed, and rightly so, to the harsh economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. in the wake of the abnegation of the JCPOA for no good reason.

But there is a different way Iranians might think about all this, taking a longer-term view.

First, consider how utterly rich Iran really is compared to maybe four or five other countries in the world, even if Iran can’t currently sell nearly as much of its riches – mostly petroleum – as was possible a year ago. Also consider what it was mostly selling its riches for what will ultimately be worthless paper.

 And further consider these factors: even with a population of some 83 million people, it will be generations, if Iran could never sell much if any of its oil any longer before Iranian citizens would ever be without more than enough subsidized energy resources for transportation and heating and the myriad other uses for oil. You can’t say this about more than a handful of other countries. Moreover, Iran has a relatively educated population, and the gene pool might be labeled “SMART”. No one else likely could have invented chess!

One might imagine that the U.S., with five percent of the world’s population (but burning up nearly 30 percent of the world’s energy resources annually) and living relatively “high on the hog”, is eventually going to suffer worse than Iran ever has or will. Yes, the U.S. is allegedly generating over 10 million barrels of oil a day where a few years ago the figure was maybe 6 million BPD. This is because of the recent discoveries of shale oil in the Dakotas and in the Southwest of the U.S.

Shale oil, however, has not proven to be an economic bonanza. For one thing, it’s not a cash flow positive enterprise, and also the wells pumping shale oil rapidly deplete. The various companies doing it are deeply in precarious debt. It has been estimated that 75 or more percent is gone from shale wells within two or three years. (No one can say that about Iran’s oil or gas fields, or for that matter, Arabia’s, such as the granddaddy of them all onshore, Ghawar, or the offshore Safaniya field to name just two.) 

Part of the reason (when energy resources really begin to taper worldwide) the U.S is hit harder is because it has been such a profligate user of oil, and wasted so more of it by subsidizing the oil industry and not using those funds to turn strongly to alternative energy such as wind and solar, or even geothermal and oceanic tidal or current sources. (And of all countries, Iran has an abundance, too, of sunshine and wind to make energy, if it ever wants to exploit that route.) Iran can be energy independent virtually forever, but the U.S.? No way at anywhere near today’s levels of greedy usage.

Indeed, according to economist and writer James Howard Kunstler, one must look at both China and the U.S., the world’s two largest economies. He compares the two countries to passengers on a sinking ship drifting beyond the reach of salvation on a powerful historical current. “That current,” he writes, “is the one telling nations quite literally to mind their own business, to prepare to go their own ways, to strive to somehow become self-sufficient, TO FINALLY FACE THE LIMITS OF GROWTH, TO SIMPLIFY AND DOWNSCALE THEIR OPERATIONS.”

In fact, Iran already has a head start in these directions, thanks or no thanks to the imperial U.S. And not having an especially strong economy for now, despite the petroleum riches, Iranians are accustomed to hardships and the necessity for simplification, and probably can survive and deal with hardships in future far better than, for examples, either China, with its huge population just recently enjoying a “middle class” existence or the U.S. with its insatiable greed.

And look at Russia. Russia has also been under the lash of U.S. sanctions and even though it supplies Europe with at least 35 or more percent and growing of its energy needs, and outside of Venezuela may have the largest oil reserves of any country, Russia has begun to prosper increasingly by attempting to develop industry and agriculture that makes it possible to reduce dependency on energy sales. Russia has just begun to supply China with soybeans, for one example, to the horror of American farmers, given the extant and growing trade war between the U.S. and China.

Iran’s leaders, whoever they are or may become, can over time chart Iran’s own way with the same general course Russia is on today: less dependency on a natural resource economy and more on diverse ways to meet the needs of all Iranians and overseas customers in a world that is being forced to do what James Howard Kunstler knows makes sense.