On Nov. 29, Iranian students stormed the British Embassy and another diplomatic compound in Tehran. The demonstrators caused damage to the facilities, burned the British flag and confiscated documents. The students were protesting Britain’s new sanctions on banking with Iran, which blocks almost all economic activity between the two countries. Among other aims, the students were hoping to recover documents from the British Embassy that would prove U.K./U.S./Israeli responsibility for the serial assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.
In reaction, the British closed their embassy in Tehran and expelled diplomats from the Iranian Embassy in London. Several other European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands also temporarily recalled their envoys from Tehran.
On Dec. 2, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a law designed to cut off Iran’s central bank from the global financial system and severely disrupt its oil income. The European Union also tightened its sanctions and even laid out plans for an embargo on Iranian oil. In response to concerns raised by Greece about possible disruption to the European supply of oil, the EU stated that it would stop imports of oil from Iran once it finds suppliers from other countries.
This will not be the first time in history that Iran’s oil has been sanctioned by imperialist powers. In March 1951, after the Iranian Parliament nationalized the oil, the British spearheaded an international campaign to sanction Iran’s oil. Up to then, the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, now British Petroleum, stole Iran’s oil, giving the country virtually nothing. Making a case for international sanctions, the British argued that the oil nationalization would “cause a loss of one hundred million pounds per annum in the United Kingdom’s balance of payments, thus seriously affecting our rearmament program and our cost of living.”
The British imposed a series of other harsh sanctions, and their warships blockaded Iranian ports and intercepted tankers carrying Iranian oil. The United States and other imperialist powers joined in, imposing extreme hardships on Iran’s economy, already weak due to colonial exploitation.
Sanctions an attempt to punish Iran for independence
The stated justifications and the pretenses are very different in 2011 than they were in 1951, but the root cause of the sanctions against Iran is the same. The sanctions are punishment for an oppressed country daring to exercise independence, whether in fossil fuels or nuclear energy.
Despite plunging the country into extreme poverty, the sanctions in the 1950s did not yield the ultimate aim of regime change. It took a British-inspired, CIA-engineered and -implemented coup in 1953 to overthrow the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh and install the Shah, a U.S. puppet.
Since the early years of the 1979 revolution, Iran has been under U.S. sanctions. But it was in December 2006 when the U.N. Security Council first imposed sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program.
Over the last two decades, Iran has managed to independently develop nuclear energy, mastering the technology of uranium enrichment up to 20 percent. Low enriched uranium—around 3 percent—is useful for the generation of nuclear energy. Iran now has a functional nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr. Higher levels of enriched uranium—around 20 percent—have various medical uses, such as cancer treatment and certain diagnostic equipment. To produce fuel for nuclear bombs, uranium enriched to 90 percent or higher is needed. Over recent years, many International Atomic Energy Agency reports, including the most recent one, have indicated that no conversion of uranium to weapons grade has been recorded.
But the recent round of condemnation of Iran came following a Nov. 8 report by the IAEA. With “credible” intelligence provided by “member countries” (presumably the United States or one of its junior partners), the report stated that the IAEA had found suspicion of an effort to build nuclear bombs.
Despite its claims, the IAEA report contains no evidence of the existence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. Hundreds of inspectors over the years have discovered no highly enriched uranium, no nuclear warheads and no sites where nuclear warhead delivery systems were being designed or built. The report elevates accusations and suspicions to the level of evidence. Rather than the discovery of new evidence, what the report reflects is the change in the leadership of the IAEA.
For years, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA up to November 2009, refused to bow to intense U.S. pressure to include unsubstantiated accusations in the IAEA reports. Instead, his agency reported the facts discovered by its inspectors, stating repeatedly the lack of evidence of a nuclear weapons program. This is why the Bush administration tried unsuccessfully to have ElBaradei removed.
Under new leadership, IAEA now tows the line
But now that Yukiya Amano is the IAEA director general, things have changed. Amano is compliantly producing reports that the United States and its allies want to see. In the words of Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s representative to the United Nations, the recent IAEA report was more of “a PR exercise than a serious nuclear effort” and contained “very little new information about the various suspicions about Iran’s nuclear program.”
The IAEA report on Iran is reminiscent of the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Despite the fact that hundreds of the most intrusive and provocative inspections of sites in Iraq never produced a shred of evidence of weapons of mass destruction, continued IAEA inspections and suspicions allowed weapons of mass destruction to serve as the primary justification for the invasion.
But what if Iran did have a plan to build nuclear weapons? What gives the right to the United States, France and the U.K., which have so many nuclear warheads that they could destroy human life on Earth many times over, to punish Iran for pursuing nuclear weapons? From the days of George W. Bush, the United States has repeatedly threatened Iran with military attack, refusing even to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. Iran has the right to defend itself by any means necessary, including nuclear weapons. The utter hypocrisy of nuclear armed countries punishing a country for allegedly thinking of having nuclear weapons always escapes the reporting of the business media.
Speaking of hypocrisy, the country that cries the loudest about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program is Israel, with a nuclear arsenal of 200-300 warheads. Conveniently, Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; hence it is never subjected to inspections. And to the preposterous claim that Israel’s nuclear warheads are in “responsible” hands, one only has to point to the fact that not a single one of Israel’s neighbors has escaped being attacked and invaded by Israel over the state’s short history.
In early November, it was widely reported that Israeli “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak (were) trying to muster a majority in the cabinet in favor of military action against Iran.” According to the same reports, Netanyahu and Barak had actually persuaded Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Since the early days of the Bush administration, the possibility of a U.S./Israeli attack on Iran has come up repeatedly. In addition to the overtly threatening language of various U.S. and Israeli officials, journalists such as Seymour Hirsch have repeatedly reported specific leaks of an imminent attack on Iran. At times, the supposed impending attacks have had specific timeframes, such as after the November 2008 presidential elections before Bush was to leave office.
Sanctions set the stage for other forms of intervention
Given the history of countless bloody invasions and occupations by the United States and Israel, such threats always have to be taken seriously. However, the example of Iraq showed not just the criminal nature of sanctions but how they can set the stage for other forms of intervention. The 13 years of sanctions on Iraq took over a million lives and laid the basis for the 2003 invasion. It was only after Iraq was severely weakened and its defensive capabilities eroded that the invasion was launched.
An Israeli attack on Iran is highly unlikely, given that Israel lacks the military capability to penetrate the deeply entrenched nuclear facilities. Even a U.S. military attack is improbable under the current circumstances. What kept the Bush administration from bombing Iran was the fact that an aerial bombardment, no matter how devastating, would not result in regime change and would leave Iran able to react. That factor has not changed.
The threat of an Israeli attack; rumors of a U.S. attack; tightened economic sanctions; repeated U.S. drone violations of Iranian air space, including the one that was shot down on Dec. 4; a relentless propaganda campaign through satellite TV-channels such as BBC-Farsi and Voice of America broadcast 24-7 in Farsi—these are all components of a destabilization campaign.
Iran’s economy has so far withstood the sanctions and even managed modest growth, as indicated by this summer’s IMF report of a 3.2 percent growth. But the new round of U.S./EU sanctions do not just cut Iran off from selling to the U.S./EU. They punish companies from any country that engages in financial transactions with Iran’s central bank, making it difficult for Iran to sell oil.
If the sanctions succeed in making Iran’s economy collapse, the next stage in imperialist intervention could be the promotion of a new round of “pro-democracy” protests. The sectors of the Iranian population that participated in the right-wing opposition movement after the June 2009 presidential elections may well be re-activated. As the example of Libya proves, the United States and its allies might declare any opposition movement, no matter its breadth and scope, to represent all the people, possibly setting the stage for the next round of intervention, including a military campaign.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was part of a broader strategy of redrawing the map of the Middle East. As stated frequently at the time, Syria and Iran were next in line. The Iraqi resistance effectively put the rest of the plan on hold. Now, with the successful overthrow of the nationalist government of Libya, Syria destabilized and Iran under extreme pressure, the imperialists see a Middle East free of independent states as a real possibility once again.
Of course, as long as oppression and exploitation exist, resistance will exist. Through its various internal and external conflicts, Iran has resisted going back to the days of the Shah, when Iran was a U.S. client and independence was only a dream. Resistance to subjugation will undoubtedly continue. It is the responsibility of all progressive forces in the United States to condemn not just possible military attacks against Iran, but also to actively oppose sanctions and other forms of intervention. U.S. Hands off Iran!
