Isolating Iran

Current attempts at dealing with Iran are based on the aim of isolating it from the rest of the international community. This is why the UN, as well as the US and EU, have imposed sanctions which seek to harm Iran’s international trade. The EU sanctions, approved on the 17th of July, seek to hit investment in Iran’s major source of income, the oil and gas industry. As a result of the UN sanctions, the UAE Central Bank told financial institutions in the UAE to freeze 41 Iranian bank accounts. Indeed, under pressure by the international community, the Dubai Financial Services Authority further warned companies to conduct risk assessment when dealing with banks and other clients domiciled in Iran. This is significant because trade between Iran and Dubai has historically been highly profitable for both countries. The effect of such sanctions and international pressure can be seen in the fact that trade between Iran and the UAE will halve to $6 billion in 2010 from 2008, according to Dubai’s Iranian Business Council. The US has imposed some of the harshest measures aimed at stopping any lucrative investment in to Iran. For example, any company that provides Iran with refined petroleum products will not have access to US markets. Such measures have meant that major companies have stopped investment in to Iran; we recently saw BP refusing to supply Iran Air with jet fuel.

However, the West has also tried more political and diplomatic measures in trying to isolate Iran. It has increasingly tried to undermine the alliances which Iran has made with other countries. China and Russia were the biggest thorns in the side of the West over dealings with Iran. The US soon realised that any attempt to isolate Iran would be severely damaged without the cooperation of these two powers. This is because they can block UN sanctions (through their veto in the Security Council), supply Iran with more investment (compensating for the effect of sanctions) and trade military goods with Iran. Indeed, in February this year, the Financial Times reported that China was set to overtake the EU as Iran’s largest trading partner. Equally alarmingly for the West, Russia has continued to supply Iran militarily; in 2005 Russia and Iran signed a £386 million contract for Russia to sell it 29 Tor-M1 missile systems. Russia has sold Iran a vast array of military equipment, including T-72 tanks and MiG-29 aircraft. Let us also not forget that the nuclear reactor at Bushehr is Russian built! It is therefore unsurprising the both Russia and China were initially reluctant to support sanctions on Iran. Early in 2010, China’s foreign minister Yang Jiechi said, "Pressure and sanctions are not the fundamental way forward to resolving the Iran nuclear issue.”

However, both these countries did give in to international pressure and voted for the latest (tougher) UN sanctions. Russia in particular has recently been happier to tow the American line. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev even conceded on the 12th of July that Iran was closer to being able to make nuclear weapons. It is still unclear whether the planned shipment from Russia to Iran of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles (which would make an Israeli/US strike on nuclear targets in Iran much more difficult) is going ahead. China has maintained opposition to any unilateral imposition of sanctions such as the US ones. It is unclear where China will go from here but it seems unlikely, given economic ties, that China will allow any further measures against Iran. One effect of cooperation by Russia and China with the UN sanctions, however, is that the role of Brazil and Turkey has become an increasingly important issue. It is yet to be seen what impact they will have on resolving the nuclear issue, having both voted against the latest round of sanctions.

But whether or not the policy of isolating Iran is working, it is simply the wrong policy to adopt in the first place. What the West has not understood is that support for Iran’s defiant attitude is premised on the idea that Iran is surrounded by enemies. Since the early days of Western meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, many Iranians have felt manipulated, feeling that everyone always to get something out of Iran. An early sign of this was the British and American backed coup which removed Mussadiq from power in 1953. This was clearly linked to the nationalisation of the oil industry and led Iranians to believe that the West would do anything to maintain its strategic interests in Iran. The event which still generates anger amongst Iranians today is the Iran-Iraq war of 1980. This was a war which Iran fought in self defence, in which up to 1 million Iranians ended up dead and yet the US publicly supported Iraq and bankrolled their war effort. Not only this, but the USA actually attacked an Iranian civilian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655) in 1988, murdering 290 civilians. It is no wonder that Iranians feel that it is the West which is aggressive and threatening in light of these events. More recently, the US have surrounded Iran with its military. The US now has a military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia as well as use of military facilities in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. From an Iranian perspective, they are surrounded by around 200,000 US troops. In addition to this, members of the Arab GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) continue to buy large amounts of weapons from the US and the UK, further militarising the Persian Gulf.

In essence, the Iranian psyche is one of victimhood. It is the notion that Iran continues to suffer the shrewd attempts of the West to exploit it and remove its sovereignty. This is coupled with the fact that Iran is surrounded by Arab countries who all (except Syria) backed Iraq’s aggressive military expansion in to Iran in 1980. This is why trying to isolate Iran does not work as a policy in trying to stop their nuclear development, because it is that isolation which drives them to defy the West in the first place.