Jewish leaders in the United States now believe that new sanctions being weighed against Iran will still leave an inevitable choice: Either accept a nuclear-armed Iran, or launch a military strike against its nuclear facilities.
That’s the sobering conclusion that emerges from interviews conducted by The Jewish Daily Forward, the online site of the weekly Forward newspaper.
“Between where we are today and the two ultimate options, there is still a lot of space to be filled,” said David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee. "The question is, Will it be filled? What’s contemplated currently seems very inadequate to the task.”
New U.N. sanctions are still being negotiated and will likely target the Iranian economy and companies doing business with the Islamic Republic.
However, previous economic sanctions, including the freezing of Iranian assets, have not deterred Iran from continuing its nuclear program. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that only $43 million in Iranian money has been frozen in the U.S. — a quarter of what Iran earns from oil sales in one day.
Harsher sanctions could seek to cut off Iran’s supply of refined petroleum — Iran must import a large percentage of its gasoline.
“If the new sanctions touch on the Iranian energy sector — and that remains to be seen — Iranians are already, we’re told, trying to hoard more refined energy product to avoid any effect on their domestic economy,” Harris told the Forward.
“It’s not clear that even strong sanctions, however well intentioned, will have the desired effect.”
Keith Weissman, former top Iran analyst for the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, said: “There is no question that sanctions like this will hurt Iranian economic activity, but will they do what we want them to do, which is to affect Iran’s ability to do what we don’t want them to do, like build nuclear weapons?”
There is also concern that sanctions that negatively impact average Iranians could push them to rally around their government, which has grown increasingly unpopular at home.
“Who will suffer? Will it be the revolutionary guards, the regime or the people?” said Yoram Peri, director of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland.
“If you make the people suffer, generally they will tend to support their government rather than revolt.”
The Insider Report disclosed earlier that President Obama wants to hold off passage of a bill imposing stern American sanctions so he can maintain “flexibility” in dealing with other countries in confronting Iran.
Indeed, effective sanctions will demand “real coordination” among many countries, Peri added.
“And to tell you the truth, I’m not sure whether we’ll get there.”
The difficulty in imposing effective sanctions became clear this past week with reports that a state-owned Chinese refiner made plans to ship 30,000 metric tons of gasoline to Iran. European traders halted shipments earlier this year.
Unipec, the trading arm of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, arranged to load the oil tanker Hongbo with gasoline in Singapore, according to Singapore ship brokers, who said the tanker would likely go directly to Iran.
Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner, had not sold gasoline to Iran since 2004, Reuters reported.
A petroleum trader told Reuters: “As long as there is money to be made, and economic benefits to be taken advantage of, Iran will always find ready sellers of gasoline from the international market.”
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