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IRAN: Defiant as Sanctions Begin to Bite

Kimia Sanati

TEHRAN, Feb 26 2007 (IPS) - While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen to defy Western plans to deepen sanctions against his country for its hugely contentious nuclear programme, criticism is growing louder at home for exposing Iran to avoidable risks and hardship.

While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen to defy Western plans to deepen sanctions against his country for its hugely contentious nuclear programme, criticism is growing louder at home for exposing Iran to avoidable risks and hardship.

Ahead of Monday’s meeting in London of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, to consider punitive action against Tehran for ignoring an ultimatum to halt uranium enrichment, Ahmadinejad was quoted by the Fars news agency as saying: “Iran’s nuclear train is racing ahead and it does not have any brake or rear gear because we have uninstalled and dropped them away.”

”They (the West) claim that they support dialogue and logic but when they are about to lose the game they resort to military force. Yet, they should know that even their weapons are of no efficiency today,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the semi-official news agency.

Yet, criticism in the local press, and among observers of Ahmadinejad’s provocatively defiant stance that has led to the present situation, surfaced over the weekend – this despite the establishment’s warnings that comment on the nuclear policy could compromise the nation’s security and would invite penalty.

Ruling hardliners and conservatives starting with Ahmadinejad staunchly deny that sanctions can cause irreparable damage to the nation and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has described ”propaganda about existence of a state of emergency in Iran” as false. Yet, the impact of sanctions is beginning to be felt by ordinary Iranians.

“What good is nuclear fuel for an unfinished nuclear plant (in Bushehr) going to bring to us if our people have to go under sanctions and get poorer and poorer everyday? Importing is already difficult and several major international banks have stopped dealings with Iran. We are dependent on imports in many fields and many businesses can be greatly affected. Less business would mean less employment and economic stagnation,” the director of an importing enterprise in Tehran told IPS, asking to remain anonymous.

Iran is already under limited sanctions with a Dec. 23 U.N. resolution banning the supply to Iran of materials and technology that could be used for its nuclear or missile programmes and freezing the assets of ten top Iranian companies and 12 entities.

”Even before existing financial sanctions are enforced, doing business with the outside world has slowed down. Iran is seeking alternative methods to remedy this like earmarking a five billion US dollar credit line to Turkey. This will allow Iran to make imports from Western countries through Turkey but the process will be more costly for us and benefit the Turks,” an analyst in Tehran told IPS, asking not to be quoted by name.

Discussion of the country’s nuclear policies by political parties, individuals and the press has long been banned by the Supreme National Security Council, the body responsible for all nuclear policy making and negotiations. But voices are beginning to be heard.

”There is no doubt that nuclear energy is our inalienable right,” the ‘Rooz’ portal quoted Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel peace laureate and rights activist as saying. ”But we have other more important, more urgent inalienable rights like the right to welfare, peace, healthcare and freedom. One right can’t be sacrificed to the other.”

There is consensus among Iranian political parties on the nation’s ‘inalienable’ right to possess and use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but many including the Islamic Revolution’s Mujahedin Organisation (IRMO) are now questioning the current policies that have led the country to a crisis. They are demanding a return to the course taken by Iran’s former nuclear negotiation team led by Hasan Rohani under the reformist regime of former president Mohammad Khatami.

“There is a danger that by continuation of imprudence and adoption of an irrational and sometimes adventurous course of action after expiry of the two-month U.N. deadline, the crisis may find greater dimensions and endanger national interests and the security of the system and the country,” the IRMO, a small but influential reformist political party, said in a statement released just before the expiry of the U.N. deadline.

“Unfortunately officials and fosterers of erroneous current policies are preventing the discussion or explanation of the contents of the (U.N.) resolution (1737) to the public à.Continuation of this course under the pretext of the enemy taking advantage (of domestic criticism) can cause serious challenge to the national expediency and the nation’s vital interests,” the IRMO statement said.

The IRMO demanded a stop to provoking the international community with threats to make the world insecure if Iran is attacked, to exit the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), to attack neighbouring countries and to sell enriched uranium to Islamic countries.

”Concerns about the costs imposed by the relentless pursuit of nuclear technology are rising among the Iranian public who seem to be even more alarmed of prospects of a military attack now than actual sanctions,” an observer in Tehran told IPS, requesting anonymity. ”With what happened in Iraq they now know the U.S. president is not so much different from our own and is capable of making yet another wrong decision that would be affecting us (Iran) this time,” he said.

Reformist parties, hugely concerned about hardliners pushing the country to a point of no return, are now increasingly rallying around the influential Expediency Council chairman, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the man called a king-maker and a grand lobbyist. Joined by Khatami and former parliament speaker, Mehdi Karrubi, he has been actively trying to diffuse tensions and bring hardliners and western alike to their senses.

The appropriate way to solve Iran’s nuclear case is that big powers give up their unreasonable preconditions (i.e., suspension of enrichment before talks can start) and negotiation, Rafsanjani told a Friday prayer congregation in Tehran. “Using weapons of mass destruction is not part of our discourse. You say you can’t trust Iran not to use its nuclear achievements in its military industries. We are prepared to offer you absolute assurance in this respect,” he added.

“The nation is facing a threatening course in the international scene,” the ‘Etemad Melli’, the mouthpiece of Karrubi’s reformist Etemad Melli Party warned in an editorial on Saturday. “In spite of certain unfounded optimism about the role of China and Russia (in postponing or reducing the intensity of a second Chapter 7 U.N. resolution against Iran), one cannot really place too much hope in them,” the editorial said.

Russia and China, which have close economic, strategic and energy ties with Tehran, moved to mitigate the Dec. 23 sanctions and these Security Council members are expected to once again oppose overly harsh sanctions.

But the role Russia can play has come under criticism. Russia’s refusal to complete a nuclear plant it has been building in Bushehr since 1995 and to deliver the fuel required for the operation of the plant has caused suspicions about its real intentions.

Accusing Russia of playing a dual game and taking advantage of Iran’s nuclear situation to acquire concessions from Western powers, ‘Aftab-e-Yazd’, a reformist daily associated with an elite clerical party of which Khatami is secretary general, called on Iran’s nuclear negotiators to give up hopes of Russian support.

”Time has come to stop insisting on some tactics, especially those related to (the) Russian’s (role) and while stressing our nuclear strategy, to change certain means (towards its achievement). Costs can be reduced to a minimum even if it seems too late to have ultimate achievements,” an Aftab-e-Yazd editorial said in its Saturday edition.