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| Author: | Greg Bruno, Staff Writer |
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September 23, 2009
With concern in the West mounting over Iran's nuclear ambitions, some lawmakers and policy advocates are pushing for a fresh round of sanctions aimed at halting Tehran's uranium-enrichment program. In March 2009, President Barack Obama, like President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton before him, renewed an executive order banning U.S. investment in Iran's energy sector. Talks involving Iran, the United States, and other world powers engaged in the diplomatic process over Iran's nuclear program are scheduled for October 1. Yet demands for a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions continue to be seen as an important form of international leverage. "There is unanimity within the P-5+1 [the UN Security Council, plus Germany] in support of our two-track approach that involves engagement and pressure," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley told journalists in September 2009. Some Iran analysts are urging Washington to act sooner (Bloomberg) to further toughen existing U.S. and international sanctions. Other analysts, including John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the UN, suggest only military force (WSJ) will prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.
The long list of U.S. economic and political sanctions against Iran has its root in the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis. On November 14, 1979, President Jimmy Carter declared an emergency and ordered a freeze on all Iranian assets "which are or become subject to the jurisdiction of the United States." The emergency order has been extended every year since, most recently by President Barack Obama in March 2009. Additional sanctions were imposed when, in January 1984, Iran was implicated in the bombing of the U.S. Marine base in Beirut, Lebanon. The United States added Iran to its list of countries that support terrorism (in this case, the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah), banning U.S. foreign aid to Tehran and imposing export controls on dual-use items. Over the next decade, deteriorating relations prompted the United States to ban exports to Iran on a host of products, from airplane and helicopter parts to scuba gear.
Concern over Iran's nuclear program surfaced later, and today is the driving factor behind efforts to tighten the economic noose. The following areas are targeted by significant U.S. sanctions:
"[Sanctions have] to be coupled with this attempt to negotiate and really bargain with Iran, and to put some carrots on the table as well as sticks." -- Kimberly Ann Elliott, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development
Refined gasoline. Both Congress and the Obama administration are considering measures (Reuters) that would penalize domestic and foreign companies for selling refined gasoline to Iran, or for supplying equipment in Iran's bid to increase its refining capacity. But some experts are skeptical of such an approach, saying it often inadvertently targets the wrong entities. "They are sanctions against our allies, and the people that we need to get on board with us, to help us deal with Iran," says Kimberly Ann Elliott, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development who has studied sanctions policy. Iran imports gasoline from a number of important U.S. allies (PDF), including India, France, the Netherlands, and a host of Gulf states. "Putting sanctions on their companies is not very likely to encourage them to be cooperative" on other issues of regional importance, Elliott says. Additionally, nations that rely on Iranian gas imports--notably Turkey--are unlikely to support a gasoline import ban, experts say.
The UN Security Council has wrestled with imposing sanctions on Iran since 2006 due to Iran's failures to comply with International Atomic Energy Agency requirements and its continuing uranium-enrichment activities. In December of that year, the council approved the first of three multilateral resolutions authorizing bans on exports of nuclear, missile, and dual-use technologies; limiting travel by forty Iranian officials; and freezing the assets of forty individuals and entities, including Bank Sepah and various front companies. The measures also call on states not to do business with Iran, and authorizes the inspection of cargo carried by Iranian shippers. Efforts to push through a fourth round of economic noose tightening at the UN will be complicated by resistance from Russia and China, two nations linked to Iran by important economic and political interests.
European allies have also implemented their own sanctions, though historically these states have had less of an appetite for punitive measures. For much of the 1990s, while Washington imposed unilateral sanctions, EU countries maintained a policy of "critical dialogue" with Iran. But as Iran grew increasingly defiant on the nuclear front, European partners turned up the heat (PDF), Katzman of the Congressional Research Service notes. In June 2008, the EU froze the assets of nearly forty individuals and entities doing business with Bank Melli, Iran's largest bank; Western officials have accused Bank Melli of supporting Iran's nuclear and missile programs. Japan and the EU have also placed restrictions on international lending to Iran, which, Katzman writes, "represents a narrowing of past differences between the United States and its allies on this issue." Nonetheless, the European Union remains Iran's largest trading partner. In 2008 Iran exported $16.9 billion worth of goods to EU countries.
Experts are divided on the effectiveness of sanctions as a tool to force rogue states to abandon their weapons programs. In the cases of Libya and Iraq, many analysts note the role economic sanctions had in inhibiting the development of weapons programs (though in the case of Iraq, the full extent of their effectiveness was not known until after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003). And in Iran, there is some evidence that sanctions are hindering economic growth. But others say Iran's economy remains relatively healthy, and any setback has had less to do with international pressure than poor economic policies. Elliott, of the Center for Global Development, says the best approach would be for the United States to better coordinate its efforts with the EU, given the relatively bleak prospects for a new round of sanctions at the UN. Yet Elliott says sanctions should only be seen as one tool in a broader diplomatic arsenal: "It has to be coupled with this attempt to negotiate and really bargain with Iran, and to put some carrots on the table as well as sticks," she says. "I don't think the sticks alone are going to do it."
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