Word: iran
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Could the U.S. block sales of refined gasoline to Iran as a way of ratcheting up pressure on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime? That's a prospect U.S. politicians have talked up for months. But as the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China prepare for crucial talks with Iran in Geneva on Oct. 1, there's a growing realization that the strategy might not work. "The hype around blocking gas is hugely overdone," says Richard Dalton, who was British ambassador to Iran until 2006 and is now an associate fellow at the London think tank Chatham House. "People...
...idea of blocking refined gas to Iran was raised several times during last year's U.S. presidential campaign. Barack Obama described the plan in a debate with John McCain as "putting the squeeze" on Ahmadinejad. In April the U.S. Senate introduced the bipartisan Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which would expand sanctions imposed by Bill Clinton in 1996 and give the White House the authority to sanction companies that export gas to Iran. Senator Joe Lieberman told reporters at the time that the law would "target Iran's Achilles' economic heel, which is its dependence on imports of petroleum ... most...
...unclear how deeply a new batch of sanctions against Iran would cut, particularly since the U.S. needs Moscow and Beijing as signatories if it wants the initiative to pack a punch. Russia and Iran have shared economic interests, and according to some estimates, China has some $100 billion tied up in Iranian oil and gas reserves. Both countries have been unwilling to rebuke their strategic partner in the past. A watered-down set of sanctions might be disappointing to those, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who want to "cripple" Iran. But they wouldn't be out of the ordinary...
...Read about efforts to grow the Iran-sanctions coalition...
...muscle-flexing response, Tehran announced that its Revolutionary Guards had conducted new tests of medium- and short-range missiles - a sign that the threat of further sanctions didn't seem to have made much impact. For one thing, Iran has been dealing with such restrictions since the Islamic revolution in 1979. For another, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is probably in on the open secret about economic sanctions: they don't really work. Attempts to economically isolate troublemaking nations are the leech treatments of international diplomacy: traditional cure-alls that, though well-intentioned, rarely force regime change or prompt significant policy...