Tag Archives: Iran sanctions

How a Desperate Iran Will React to Sanctions

Posted on by
Reply

Iranian Naval Vessel

By Ryan Mauro

The European Union’s embargo on Iranian oil went into effect on Sunday, July 1. Other countries cut back their imports. The regime admits it’s feeling the sting but is boisterously defiant. These sanctions are the toughest yet but they will only succeed in stopping Iran’s nuclear program if the regime’s very existence is threatened. The key question now is whether it is too late for sanctions to work.

The pain caused by these sanctions should not be dismissed. Estimates vary as to how much of the regime’s revenue comes from oil exports, with some saying its 50% and others putting it as high as 85%. No matter what the truth is, the Iranian economy was a shambles before these sanctions began. In 2010, the regime had to cut funding to Hezbollah by about 40% because of financial restraints. Plus, rising domestic consumption takes away from Iran’s oil exports more and more each year. Some studies forecast that Iran would have to cease all oil exports in order to accommodate its own oil needs by 2015.

Iran’s exports began collapsing immediately after the U.S. began planning sanctions on foreign companies involved in the regime’s oil trade. The regime is suffering from a 40% decline in oil exports already. Iran has already lost at least $10 billion as its output is at its lowest level in 20 years. Inflation is above 20% and the Iranian people are, unfortunately, under tremendous stress. “Little by little, even fruit is becoming a luxury,” said one shopkeeper in Tehran.

The Obama Administration is being criticized for issuing exemptions from sanctions to Iran’s top 20 oil buyers. However, in fairness, the “stick” of possible sanctions and “carrot” of possible exemptions forced these countries to reduce their purchases.

Read more at Radical Islam

 

 

Thwarted Terror Attack Reveals Iranian Desperation

Posted on by
Reply

By Rick Moran

Two Iranian nationals arrested in Kenya in June with 33 pounds of explosives are alleged to have targeted American, Israeli, British, and Saudi interests in the African country, according to an exclusive AP report quoting Kenyan officials. The news comes following the imposition of strict sanctions by the EU and America that appear — finally — to be severely impacting the Iranian people and economy. In response, Iranians are ratcheting up tension in the Persian Gulf by carrying out military exercises where they promise to test fire several dozen missiles, using replicas of foreign army bases as targets. The message the mullahs are sending is clear; if America attacks, they can strike one of several US military bases in the region.

The sanctions are relatively stiff to be sure. The Europeans have banned the importation of all Iranian oil and forbidden nations belonging to the EU from insuring oil tankers carrying Iranian crude. The United States, for its part, slapped severe currency and banking restrictions on Iran that have reportedly caused confusion and worry among the Iranian people.

Meanwhile, the Iranians continue to enrich uranium while stringing along the P5+1 (Russia, China, Britain, Germany, France, and the US) nations who continue fruitless negotiations with Tehran about halting their uranium enrichment activities. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told the Knesset, “Iran is showing contempt for the whole world, and plans to enrich beyond 20%,” — a reference to a level of enrichment for which there is little commercial value and would be far easier to continue on to bomb grade levels of enrichment of 90%. Low-level technical talks with the Iranian regime are to resume on Tuesday in Istanbul with little hope that a breakthrough of any kind can be achieved.

Some experts believe that the arrest of the Iranians in Kenya and the targeting of US and Western interests is a sign that Iran will fight the battle over its nuclear program by resorting to terrorism. The AP report contains some disturbing information. Kenyan officials say that the Iranians belonged to the Quds Force — the elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards tasked with assassination and terror attacks outside of Iranian territory. The Iranians were arrested in the coastal city of Mombassa where there are several Israeli-owned hotels. Kenyan officials told AP that “the plot appears to fit into a global pattern of attacks or attempted attacks by Iranian agents, mostly against Israeli interests.”

Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, Britain’s security service, in a rare public statement, said last week that “in parallel with rising concern about Iran’s nuclear intentions, we have seen in recent months a series of attempted terrorist plots against Israeli interests in India, Azerbaijan and elsewhere.” He added that “a return to state-sponsored terrorism by Iran or its associates, such as Hezbollah, cannot be ruled out as pressure on the Iranian leadership increases.” In short, the more the West pushes, the more desperate Iran becomes.

Read more at Front Page

Related articles

Obama Iran Policy Contradicts Interests of Iranian Grassroots

Posted on by
1

by MANSUR RASTANI, PHD at FSM:

For decades, the United States has been among the countries that have suffered massively from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI’s) sponsorship of terrorism worldwide. It all started in 1979 when the Islamic regime ordered the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in which 66 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.

Later in 1983, the suicide bombing of U.S. military barracks in Beirut executed by the Islamic Jihad Organization, an Iranian regime’s terror proxy, left 299 Americans dead. The Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 carried out by IRI-supported groups of Hezbollah resulted in death of 19 U.S. service men. 60% of all American combat casualties in Iraq and 50% of combat casualties in Afghanistan have been caused by IRI-made IEDs. More importantly the footprint of IRI’s terrorism in America became more apparent when the U.S. District Court ruled that Iran was behind the 9/11 Attacks.

American soldiers bring hope and leave graves in every corner of the world; they take bullets to protect the national interests of the country. Their lives are shattered to keep democracy alive. To a Commander-in-Chief, they are like his family members and their deaths are indirectly a loss of a family member to him. Mr. President, you don’t negotiate and you don’t deal with the terrorists who continuously murder your family members, you should do exactly what must be done with the murderers: hold them accountable by arresting and putting them on trial. That is what a Commander-in-Chief, who cares about the lost lives of his soldiers, does.

The bitterer tragedy of the IRI’s sponsorship of terrorism has been the mark it has made on its domestic victims, the Iranian people inside the country, who have been under the systematic use of terror as a means of coercion by this terrorist state from its get-go. The Cinema Rex fire was the first act of genocide of the IRI shortly before it came to power, which resulted in the burning to death of over 400 innocent individuals. As the IRI came to power, the regime started mass executing the top officials from the predecessor government. In 1988, an act of violence unprecedented in Iranian history, was committed by the genocidal regime of Iran, the systematic execution of thousands of political prisoners across the country, which lasted for about five continuous months and resulted in the killing of as many as 30,000 prisoners. Any democratic government in the world is established based on its people’s will; the Islamic government in Iran, by contrast, is run and carried on by imposing terror, violence, and fear among its public. The regime has fortified its hold on power by resorting to arbitrary arrests, detentions, rapes, torture, and extrajudicial executions.

The “alarming” rise in Iran’s extrajudicial execution rate has underscored the warning sign of mass atrocities in the country, a clear indication of the regime’s ongoing silent genocide of political, social, ethnic, and religious groups.  Additionally, the Iranian regime maintains a policy of “religious Apartheid” toward religious minorities in Iran – like the Christians, Baha’is and Zoroastrians, amongst others. Similarly, the regime advocates “sexual apartheid” in the country, where women and men are segregated from each other and women are deprived of their rights.

Mr. President, The mass murders in Iran have outrageously taken place on the watch of six U.S. presidents – Carter, Reagan, Clinton, GHW Bush, GW Bush, and Obama, yet none of those presidents has done anything beyond rhetorical condemnation against the atrocity, genocide, and apartheid acts of the IRI regime. Over the past few decades, the international community, including the U.S., has largely stood by and watched while mass atrocities in Iran occurred. The lack of leaders bothered by their conscience and the lack of effective response options has sapped the will of governments in responding to these unprecedented crimes against humanity.

Sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that should be revoked if a regime commits acts of atrocity and genocide against its own people. Now is the time for the international communities to protect the rights of the oppressed Iranian people and save them from the long-drawn-out genocide in Iran by putting an end to the sovereignty of the IRI regime, which indeed belongs to the grassroots people of Iran.

Mr. President, the above-mentioned atrocious acts occurred when the IRI was still far from the nuclear threshold. How, then, is an Iranian regime emboldened by nuclear acquisition likely to behave?   For more than a decade Americans have heard from different U.S. presidents that an Iranian nuclear weapon is “unacceptable.” Despicably, nothing more than a protracted approach of incrementally tightened nonpolitical sanctions with Iranian people as its main burdened target, and diplomacy with the regime for a containment routine, have been utilized to stop the IRI’s nuclear threat.

Years, if not decades, of diplomacy have led nowhere; consequently Iran blusters, threatens, and continues to work furiously to obtain nuclear weapons, with the patent support of Russia and China.  Mr. President, as a result of your promise to “embrace a new era of engagement” with America’s enemies, each passing day this potentially antagonistic regime is getting closer to witnessing a celebration in Tehran for the testing its first atomic bomb. The IRI Mullahs believe it is their responsibility to bring about nuclear war to facilitate the coming of the last Islamic Messiah.

Such a theocratic regime that values martyrdom more than life, even if lacks the technology for building the nuclear warhead, when the time calls, the IRI hardliners and fanatic leaders can easily promote the proliferation of dirty nuclear bombs and make them available in the hands of their terrorist proxies across the world. Any type of negotiation with the terrorist IRI regime not only undermines the repressive measures of the regime against its people but would passively underpin the acceptance of the perpetual IRI nuclear blackmail. Only adopting a policy of collapsing the power structure of the terrorist regime of IRI would put an end to its escalating nuclear threat.

Mr. President, during the Iranian uprising in June 2009 you abandoned the oppressed people of Iran when they asked for your support. Furthermore you chose to take sides with the terrorists and extended your outstretched hand to the eradicator regime of IRI. Mr. President, you don’t negotiate with a regime that commits act of atrocities and genocide against its own people, maintains a policy of apartheid inside the country, sponsors terrorism across the globe, has ties to Al Qaida, throws threats at the regional states, interferes in the affairs of neighboring countries, attacks U.S. interests anywhere in the world, kills the best men of United States Armed Forces, and pursues acquiring a nuclear arsenal. The outcome of such negotiations and diplomacy would only help to strengthen the terrorists and to passively legitimize their actions.

Read more…