Are Iranian sanctions working?

[saxitoxin]

The west is already embargoing spare parts for civilian aircraft which is resulting in many needless deaths, like the crash of an IranAir 727 last year that killed 77 and was attributed to a lack of proper maintenance.

Iran Air 277? Caused by flying in poor weather conditions according to initial sources? With an investigation incomplete by Iranian authorities?

Did you hear that story from some guy in a bar?

The New York Times ... which may be barely one step up from a guy in a bar, but is a step up ...

Iran’s Aging Airliner Fleet Seen as Faltering Under U.S. Sanctions
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/world ... .html?_r=0

So you got confused between flight 727 in the NYTimes story, and flight 277 that crashed?

confused, indeed ...

"727" is a brand of aircraft manufactured by the Boeing Corporation. "277" is an IranAir flight number. Flight 277 was a 727.

You should stop now while you're only a little bit behind, Symmetry.

Fair point, but it's still not backing up your original story.

I'm not convinced you even know what the original story is - you seem to be very confused.

[Symmetry]

Iran currency crisis sparks Tehran street clashes

Hundreds of demonstrators in the Iranian capital clashed with riot police on Wednesday, during protests against the crisis over the country's currency. Police used batons and teargas to try to disperse the crowds.

The day after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appealed to the market to restore calm, the Grand Bazaar – the heartbeat of Tehran's economy – went on strike, with various businesses shutting down and owners gathering in scattered groups chanting anti-government slogans in reaction to the plummeting value of the rial, which has hit an all-time low this week.

"Mahmoud [Ahmadinejad] the traitor … leave politics," shouted some protesters, according to witnesses who spoke to the Guardian. Other slogans were "Leave Syria alone, instead think of us," said opposition website Kaleme.com.

Iran's alleged financial and military support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad appears to have infuriated protesters in the wake of the country's worst financial crisis since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Angry protesters and foreign exchange dealers were demonstrating near the bazaar in the south of the capital, where many exchange bureaux are located.

"The Bazaaris shouted 'Allahu Akbar' [God is great] as they closed down their shops in the morning," said a witness. "It's impossible to do business in the current situation." Amateur videos posted on YouTube which appeared to have been taken from Wednesday's protests, showed demonstrators encouraging Bazaaris to close down shops in solidarity. Security forces were soon sent to quell the protests.

"They used teargas to disperse demonstrators in Ferdowsi Street and also blocked the streets close to the protests in order to prevent people joining them," said another witness, who asked to remain anonymous. "Some shop windows in that area have been smashed and dustbins set on fire." A number of demonstrators had been arrested, according to Kaleme.

A bazaar official, Ahmad Karimi Esfahani, denied that the "turbulences" were linked to the business owners, claiming said shops were closed for security reasons and not as part of a strike. "The bazaar will open tomorrow as normal," he told the semi-official Ilna news agency. A conservative website, Baztab, described the clashes as "suspicious", denying Bazaaris were involved.

The devaluation of the rial and soaring prices of staple goods are the latest signs that western sanctions – targeting the regime's nuclear programme – and government mismanagement are compounding the country's economic woes.

On Wednesday, many foreign exchange dealers and bureaux across the country refused to trade dollars and some currency-monitoring websites refused to announce exchange rates.

Some Iranians expressed anger on social networking websites over the national TV blackout of the protests, saying it discussed the European financial crisis with little if any coverage of Tehran's unrest. The authorities were also reported to have jammed signals of the BBC's Persian service as the protest unfolded.

The government has failed to bring the rial under control despite several attempts. It has lost 57% of its value in the past three months and 75% in comparison with the end of last year. The dollar is now three times stronger than early last year. The economy minister, Shamseddin Hosseini, said the government planned to "gather up" the unofficial currency market in the latest desperate ditch to curb the crisis.

On Tuesday Iranian authorities announced they would send security services to calm the market but Wednesday's developments appear to show that the move has backfired.

Ahmadinejad was bombarded with questions about the currency crisis on Tuesday as he spoke to reporters in a press conference but the embattled president, who is under fire from his conservative rivals, rejected the suggestion that it was the result of his economic policies or government incompetence.

Instead, he blamed the rial's slump on his enemies abroad and opponents at home, saying his government was the victim of a "psychological war". Ahmadinejad acknowledged western sanctions have contributed to the crisis.

An opinion poll posted on a conservative website, Khabaronline.ir, showed that more than 90% of those participated were not convinced with Ahmadinejad's responses on Tuesday.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking to elites on Wednesday, said the country was under pressure because "it did not yield to the demands of tyrannies".

Iran is one of the world's largest oil producers and relies on crude sales as the main source of its the foreign currency reserves. The latest US and EU embargo on the imports of Iranian oil has affected that reserve, sending the rial tailspinning and making the dollar hard to come by.

Commenting on Iran's currency slump, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said that sanctions could be "remedied" swiftly if Tehran were cooperating with the international community to address the questions about its disputed nuclear programme.

"They have made their own government decisions - having nothing to do with the sanctions - that have had an impact on the economic conditions inside of the country," Clinton told reporters.

"Of course the sanctions have had an impact as well, but those could be remedied in short order if the Iranian government were willing to work with the P5+1 [the five security council members plus Germany] and the rest of the international community in a sincere manner," she added.

[BigBallinStalin]

Iran Air 277? Caused by flying in poor weather conditions according to initial sources? With an investigation incomplete by Iranian authorities?

Did you hear that story from some guy in a bar?

The New York Times ... which may be barely one step up from a guy in a bar, but is a step up ...

Iran’s Aging Airliner Fleet Seen as Faltering Under U.S. Sanctions
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/world ... .html?_r=0

So you got confused between flight 727 in the NYTimes story, and flight 277 that crashed?

confused, indeed ...

"727" is a brand of aircraft manufactured by the Boeing Corporation. "277" is an IranAir flight number. Flight 277 was a 727.

You should stop now while you're only a little bit behind, Symmetry.

Fair point, but it's still not backing up your original story.

I'm not convinced you even know what the original story is - you seem to be very confused.

If these sanctions are necessary for convincing Iran to not pursue a nuclear research program, then aren't the sanctions already failing?

Iran's going to get their nuclear weapons for Mass Extermination of Cancer (define that as one will), regardless of the sanctions, so what's the point of them?

Why put Iranians through so much misery?

[patches70]

If these sanctions are necessary for convincing Iran to not pursue a nuclear research program, then aren't the sanctions already failing?

Iran's going to get their nuclear weapons for Mass Extermination of Cancer (define that as one will), regardless of the sanctions, so what's the point of them?

Why put Iranians through so much misery?

I'd like you to ask yourself a question, but first,

In diplomacy one always gives the adversary an honorable way out. JFK did it with the Russians during the Cuban crisis. The Russians pull out their missiles in Cuba, we pull ours out of Turkey.

Now ask yourself this, is the US really giving Iran an honorable way out?

That is, if Iran does stop enriching uranium to 20%, opens up completely for international inspections, will the US lift sanctions?


If the answer to that question is "yes", then we are trying to prevent the Iranians from building the bomb.
If the answer to that question is "no", then we know the real reason for the sanctions. Regime Change.

If the answer is the latter, then war is almost assured.

Despite the propaganda about Iran and the bomb, no evidence of a nuclear weapons program has ever been found in regards to Iran. Iran, by treaty signed by the US, is legally allowed to build nuclear reactors, enrich uranium to 20% and have nuclear power and isotopes for medical research. Besides, the enrichment needs to be 90% for weapons grade material.
They just recently converted 1/3 of all their enriched uranium into U308 (uranium oxide, used for medical research and completely legal under treaties and international law).

So what's the real goal? Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons that they aren't developing anyway? Or are we trying to destroy them from within?


Now, I won't shed any tears for the collapse of the Islamo-State. But lets not forget, we are the ones who created the conditions for it to come into being in the first place, through badly thought out foreign policy. I see only the continuation of yet more bad policy.

[Symmetry]

U.S. Suspects Iranians Were Behind a Wave of Cyberattacks

WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that Iran was the origin of a serious wave of network attacks that crippled computers across the Saudi oil industry and breached financial institutions in the United States, episodes that contributed to a warning last week from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta that the United States was at risk of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor.”

After Mr. Panetta’s remarks on Thursday night, American officials described an emerging shadow war of attacks and counterattacks already under way between the United States and Iran in cyberspace.

Among American officials, suspicion has focused on the “cybercorps” that Iran’s military created in 2011 — partly in response to American and Israeli cyberattacks on the Iranian nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz — though there is no hard evidence that the attacks were sanctioned by the Iranian government.

The attacks emanating from Iran have inflicted only modest damage. Iran’s cyberwarfare capabilities are considerably weaker than those in China and Russia, which intelligence officials believe are the sources of a significant number of probes, thefts of intellectual property and attacks on American companies and government agencies.

The attack under closest scrutiny hit Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, in August. Saudi Arabia is Iran’s main rival in the region and is among the Arab states that have argued privately for the toughest actions against Iran. Aramco, the Saudi state oil company, has been bolstering supplies to customers who can no longer obtain oil from Iran because of Western sanctions.

The virus that hit Aramco is called Shamoon and spread through computers linked over a network to erase files on about 30,000 computers by overwriting them. Mr. Panetta, while not directly attributing the strike to Iran in his speech, called it “probably the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date.”

Until the attack on Aramco, most of the cybersabotage coming out of Iran appeared to be what the industry calls “denial of service” attacks, relatively crude efforts to send a nearly endless stream of computer-generated requests aimed at overwhelming networks. But as one consultant to the United States government on the attacks put it several days ago: “What the Iranians want to do now is make it clear they can disrupt our economy, just as we are disrupting theirs. And they are quite serious about it.”

The revelation that Iran may have been the source of the computer attacks was reported earlier by The Washington Post and The Associated Press.

The attacks on American financial institutions, which prevented some bank customers from gaining access to their accounts online but did not involve any theft of money, seemed to come from various spots around the world, and so their origins are not certain. There is some question about whether those attacks may have involved outside programming help, perhaps from Russia.

Mr. Panetta spoke only in broad terms, stating that Iran had “undertaken a concerted effort to use cyberspace to its advantage.” Almost immediately, experts in cybersecurity rushed to fill in the blanks.

“His speech laid the dots alongside each other without connecting them,” James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote Friday in an essay for ForeignPolicy.com. “Iran has discovered a new way to harass much sooner than expected, and the United States is ill-prepared to deal with it.”

Iran has a motive, to retaliate for both the American-led financial sanctions that have cut its oil exports nearly in half, and for the cybercampaign by the United States and Israel against Iran’s nuclear enrichment complex at Natanz.

[saxitoxin]

Iran Suspects U.S. Was Behind a Wave of Car Bombings

Well, you know these things happen.

U.S. Suspects Iranians Were Behind a Wave of Cyberattacks

OH THAT IS IT! IT'S FUCKING TIME FOR SOME FUCKING WAR.

[saxitoxin]

If these sanctions are necessary for convincing Iran to not pursue a nuclear research program, then aren't the sanctions already failing?

Iran's going to get their nuclear weapons for Mass Extermination of Cancer (define that as one will), regardless of the sanctions, so what's the point of them?

Why put Iranians through so much misery?

I'd like you to ask yourself a question, but first,

In diplomacy one always gives the adversary an honorable way out. JFK did it with the Russians during the Cuban crisis. The Russians pull out their missiles in Cuba, we pull ours out of Turkey.

Now ask yourself this, is the US really giving Iran an honorable way out?

That is, if Iran does stop enriching uranium to 20%, opens up completely for international inspections, will the US lift sanctions?


If the answer to that question is "yes", then we are trying to prevent the Iranians from building the bomb.
If the answer to that question is "no", then we know the real reason for the sanctions. Regime Change.

If the answer is the latter, then war is almost assured.

Despite the propaganda about Iran and the bomb, no evidence of a nuclear weapons program has ever been found in regards to Iran. Iran, by treaty signed by the US, is legally allowed to build nuclear reactors, enrich uranium to 20% and have nuclear power and isotopes for medical research. Besides, the enrichment needs to be 90% for weapons grade material.
They just recently converted 1/3 of all their enriched uranium into U308 (uranium oxide, used for medical research and completely legal under treaties and international law).

So what's the real goal? Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons that they aren't developing anyway? Or are we trying to destroy them from within?


Now, I won't shed any tears for the collapse of the Islamo-State. But lets not forget, we are the ones who created the conditions for it to come into being in the first place, through badly thought out foreign policy. I see only the continuation of yet more bad policy.

This is an excellent point. People don't seem to understand the so-called "sanctions" are not a peaceful alternative to war, it's simply the opening stages in a military conflict. Before you start bombing the bejeezus out of a country you need to erode the morale of the population. This is a medieval siege.

The west must:

1 - immediately end the sanctions
2 - restore diplomatic relations
3 - pay reparations to Iran for lost revenue
4 - permit Iranian inspectors to examine all NATO nuclear weapons sites in Europe

[BigBallinStalin]

If these sanctions are necessary for convincing Iran to not pursue a nuclear research program, then aren't the sanctions already failing?

Iran's going to get their nuclear weapons for Mass Extermination of Cancer (define that as one will), regardless of the sanctions, so what's the point of them?

Why put Iranians through so much misery?

I'd like you to ask yourself a question, but first,

In diplomacy one always gives the adversary an honorable way out. JFK did it with the Russians during the Cuban crisis. The Russians pull out their missiles in Cuba, we pull ours out of Turkey.

Now ask yourself this, is the US really giving Iran an honorable way out?

That is, if Iran does stop enriching uranium to 20%, opens up completely for international inspections, will the US lift sanctions?


If the answer to that question is "yes", then we are trying to prevent the Iranians from building the bomb.
If the answer to that question is "no", then we know the real reason for the sanctions. Regime Change.

If the answer is the latter, then war is almost assured.

Despite the propaganda about Iran and the bomb, no evidence of a nuclear weapons program has ever been found in regards to Iran. Iran, by treaty signed by the US, is legally allowed to build nuclear reactors, enrich uranium to 20% and have nuclear power and isotopes for medical research. Besides, the enrichment needs to be 90% for weapons grade material.
They just recently converted 1/3 of all their enriched uranium into U308 (uranium oxide, used for medical research and completely legal under treaties and international law).

So what's the real goal? Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons that they aren't developing anyway? Or are we trying to destroy them from within?


Now, I won't shed any tears for the collapse of the Islamo-State. But lets not forget, we are the ones who created the conditions for it to come into being in the first place, through badly thought out foreign policy. I see only the continuation of yet more bad policy.

Well, those kind of exchanges are less about saving face and more about actually having something valuable to offer.

The US threatened the Russians by putting those Jupiter/Juniper missiles in Turkey. The Russians didn't like this, so they reacted accordingly (putting missiles in Cuba). Each side now has something the other side would like to go away.

With Iran, we offer than nothing and are willing to impose significant costs on them regardless--if it wasn't nuclear weapons, it would be supporting terrorism, so of course negotations won't yield results because there's very little that each party values in any possible exchange. In other words, the Iranians are willing to pay a very high price in developing nuclear weapons because the profit from nuclear weapons is immense (see: the change in geopolitics for Pakistan, India, China, Israel, etc.).

There's very little the US can 'offer' to Iran in order to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons, except for outright war--which is ridiculous.

It's ridiculous because the argument against a nuclear Iran is that if it were armed, the region would become more unstable. Currently, Iran is not nuclear, and Israel is threatening war and the US is hinting at war. If the whole point is stability or loss of less life, then the US won't get it by preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons by trying to provoke a war with them...

[thegreekdog]

If these sanctions are necessary for convincing Iran to not pursue a nuclear research program, then aren't the sanctions already failing?

Iran's going to get their nuclear weapons for Mass Extermination of Cancer (define that as one will), regardless of the sanctions, so what's the point of them?

Why put Iranians through so much misery?

I'd like you to ask yourself a question, but first,

In diplomacy one always gives the adversary an honorable way out. JFK did it with the Russians during the Cuban crisis. The Russians pull out their missiles in Cuba, we pull ours out of Turkey.

Now ask yourself this, is the US really giving Iran an honorable way out?

That is, if Iran does stop enriching uranium to 20%, opens up completely for international inspections, will the US lift sanctions?


If the answer to that question is "yes", then we are trying to prevent the Iranians from building the bomb.
If the answer to that question is "no", then we know the real reason for the sanctions. Regime Change.

If the answer is the latter, then war is almost assured.

Despite the propaganda about Iran and the bomb, no evidence of a nuclear weapons program has ever been found in regards to Iran. Iran, by treaty signed by the US, is legally allowed to build nuclear reactors, enrich uranium to 20% and have nuclear power and isotopes for medical research. Besides, the enrichment needs to be 90% for weapons grade material.
They just recently converted 1/3 of all their enriched uranium into U308 (uranium oxide, used for medical research and completely legal under treaties and international law).

So what's the real goal? Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons that they aren't developing anyway? Or are we trying to destroy them from within?


Now, I won't shed any tears for the collapse of the Islamo-State. But lets not forget, we are the ones who created the conditions for it to come into being in the first place, through badly thought out foreign policy. I see only the continuation of yet more bad policy.

This is an excellent point. People don't seem to understand the so-called "sanctions" are not a peaceful alternative to war, it's simply the opening stages in a military conflict. Before you start bombing the bejeezus out of a country you need to erode the morale of the population. This is a medieval siege.

The west must:

1 - immediately end the sanctions
2 - restore diplomatic relations
3 - pay reparations to Iran for lost revenue
4 - permit Iranian inspectors to examine all NATO nuclear weapons sites in Europe

Sorry in advance Uncle Saxi as I'm a bit uninformed about the issues with Iran, but your list sparked my interest.

Let's start with the initial premise that nationalism is alive and well in the United States (for example). It is perhaps alive and well in Iran or France or China, but let's start with the United States. And by nationalism, I mean the idea that the United States should do what is in its own best interest and f*ck everyone else.

So is the list above in the best interest of the United States? I would say yes, but I'm probably in the minority (by a long shot).

The alternative is to look at it from a fairness perspective - is it fair for the United States to examine Iranian nuclear weapons sites when Iran does not examine the US nuclear weapons sites? The answer is no, so again your plan has merit from that perspective.

[saxitoxin]

I agree, TGD, though - I admit - when I originally said that I was being a bit fanciful.

I read in Seymour Hersch's excellent book The Sampson Option that the French and Isaelis built a fake control room staffed with actors at the Dimona reactor when Kennedy demanded to send U.S. inspectors to make sure the Israelis weren't enriching uranium (they were able to dismantle it after Kennedy conveniently died), so I wonder if ground inspections are actually possible? Maybe.