"The Futility of Sanctioning Tehran"

Andrew Silvera

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam,

"The Futility of

Sanctioning Tehran"

Do facts matter in international relations?
One day after the latest US
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
established with high confidence that Iran
is not developing nuclear weapons,
President Bush stepped in front of the
cameras to declare that the NIE makes
it clear that Iran needs to be taken
seriously as a threat to peace.
Politics function here as a reality-producing
device; it takes one particular truth condition
(Iran is not developing nuclear weapons)
and transforms it into another
(Iran continues to be a threat to world order),
one that is more amendable to the particular
political agenda pursued. In this case, that
implies presenting Iran as dangerous, isolated,
irrational and a threat to international peace.

I have repeatedly argued that Iran's shift away from the
utopian-romantic foreign policy culture during the first
decade after the Islamic revolution of 1979 has yielded
to a form of utopian-realism, which continues to guide
the country's foreign policy elites towards advocating
a rather more equitable world order, but less raucous
methods to achieve that goal. Within that modified
political culture, which takes precedence over the
rhetoric of Ahmadinejad, all options are on the table,
even détente with Israel via the anti-Zionist factions
within the country. Wouldn't it be wasteful and archaic
to disregard these realities of contemporary
Iran and to continue to believe in the policy of
economic sanctions and pre-emptive aggression?
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aam150108.html

& if anyone still thinks Iran is isolated:

New Cold War:
Great Game for Supremacy in the
New World Order?

By Andrew G. Marshall
Global Research, October 31, 2007
Imperial Playground:

The Story of Iran in Recent History

Remember Zbigniew Brzezinski?
The Trilateral Commission founder,
architect of the Afghan-Soviet War
and 'Arc of Crisis' Strategy, who
wrote the geo-strategic blueprint
for American global hegemony, The Grand
Chessboard, in which he stated, "Potentially,
the most dangerous scenario would be a
grand coalition of China, Russia, and
perhaps Iran, an 'antihegemonic'
coalition united not by ideology but by
complementary grievances. It would be
reminiscent in scale and scope of the
challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc.
" ¹⁷

"Well, within ten years of writing his book, Brzezinski's
predictions became quite true, as an alternative strategic
bloc to the NATO countries has been set up, called the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO]. It was
officially founded in 2001 [after initial agreements
in 1996] by Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

"As the Guardian reported in 2006, "At the one day
annual summit of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (SCO) on June 15, more limelight fell on
the leader of an observer country than on any of the
main participants. That figure happened to be the
controversial president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Despite the lowly observer status accorded to his country,
Ahmadinejad went on to publicly invite the SCO
members to a meeting in Tehran to discuss energy
exploration and development in the region. And the
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, proposed that the
SCO should form an 'energy club'.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7219

http://freegaza.ps/english/