Only crippling sanctions will send a message to Iran

By Danny Eisen, Citizen Special
The Ottawa Citizen, September 21, 2010 – This year’s anniversary of 9/11 took place in the shadow of the Ground Zero mosque. Next year’s may take place in the shadow of a nuclear enabled Iran.
According to estimates by the Pentagon and others, Iran is within a year of crossing a critical nuclear threshold. If so, it will mark the failure of the West to address what is arguably the most serious challenge from the Islamist world since a gaping pit replaced the World Trade Center on New York’s skyline.
The impetus for Iran’s current policies stems from the broad consensus among Iran’s leadership that achieving nuclear capability is a theological imperative and a strategic precursor to fulfilling Iran’s destiny as the ’sunrise state’ — a state that will usher in a new era of Islamic global dominion.
But Iran’s fortitude in weathering international opposition to these objectives is grounded in something far less ethereal. Iranian resolve has less to do with Islamist teleology than with Iran’s astute reading of western diplomacy. Iran is simply taking its cues from 30 years of symbolic rebukes and weak UN sanctions — initiatives that amounted to a diplomatic frown as the Islamic Republic executed 120,000 people; incarcerated five million others; expanded its multi-billion-dollar industry of global terrorism, and pursued its campaign to destabilize other states. None of the carnage during this period inhibited Europe from becoming Iran’s largest trade partner. Under the guise of policies coined ’constructive engagement’ and ’critical dialogue,’ Europe sought to modify Iranian behaviour and nuclear ambitions through the lure of profits. Iran certainly did profit — reaping billions of dollars in revenues from European trade while allotting 70 per cent of those profits toward Iran’s nuclear program.
While Europe sought appeasement through trade, former president Bill Clinton sought atonement through contrition, attempting to mollify Tehran by seeking forgiveness from the Ayatollah Khomeini for U.S. ’crimes’ against Iran and its people. Perhaps Clinton felt an apology would be better received in Tehran than George Bush Sr.’s earlier offer — to forge a new beginning with Iran by ’wiping the slate clean.’ That offer had been dismissed by an indignant Ali Khameini (now Iran’s Supreme Leader) who told the president, ’You have nothing to say to us!’ But Clinton too was rebuffed — as was Barack Obama, whose conciliatory deference and generous incentives were also met with escalating contempt from Tehran.
Given the record, there is little incentive for Tehran to abort its drive for nuclear arms. Western leaders have discredited themselves as a serious threat to Iranian intentions by failing to understand the religious and cultural dynamics of a regime that views negotiation with a weaker adversary as concession, and concession to an infidel west as anathema. Appeasement and even contrition have only deepened the conviction of Ahmadinejad and his cohorts that a ’corrupt’ West ’lacks the stamina to confront Iran,’ and recently enacted sanctions have reinforced this perception.
While these sanctions have demonstrated a capacity to seriously impact Iran’s economy, they have not convinced Iran of the West’s commitment to stymieing Iran’s nuclear industry. In the eyes of the regime, the phased and limited targeting of only select Iranian industries and individuals is just a more muscular iteration of the half-hearted western policies of the last three decades. They stand as confirmation that even as Iran approaches its nuclear due date, a fearful West will not even leverage its full economic power to intervene. Iran’s leaders have concluded that the short-term economic pain of partial sanctions is a reasonable price for acquiring a technology that will establish the regional primacy of the regime, and conclusively demonstrating to Iran’s citizenry and the Islamic world that belligerence and intransigence are the tools of choice for contending with the West.
If Iran is to be disabused of these conclusions, a far more severe regimen of sanctions, like those being considered by the U.S. Congress, must be imposed. It is time to stop treating Iran’s nuclear project as some sort of a criminal enterprise or rogue industry run by individuals or groups, and not by the regime as a whole. Even if it were argued that such sanctions might still fail to curtail Iran’s nuclear project, they are still worth pursuing — as a future foundation for contending with a Mahdist regime in control of an apocalyptic weapon.
Anything other than unwavering western resolve in the face of a nuclear-invigorated Tehran will result in unencumbered regional aggression (or worse) by an emboldened Iranian regime, and will whet the appetite of other regimes also seeking strategic parity through nuclear intimidation. Tehran and its admirers must be left with no doubt that the era of appeasement has come to an end and that nuclear malevolence of any sort will now demand a price that is far less ’cost effective’ than it was for Iran over the last 30 years.
Crippling sanctions then are an imperative — either as a last nonviolent step in derailing the creation of an Iranian bomb — or as the first step in trying to prevent its use. In either case, their enactment would constitute a point of departure from the turpitude of appeasement that has now brought humanity to the edge of a precipice from which there may be no retreat.
Danny Eisen is a co-founder of C-CAT — the Canadian Coalition Against Terror. He lost a family member on 9/11. E-mail: ccat.canada@gmail.com