Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Today's Sanctions

When people ask 'do sanctions work?' I always reply, it is as if asking 'do drugs work?' If you have a headache and you take a Viagara tablet, the chances are that it will not help your headache, but at the same time you cannot conclude drugs don't work, you have simply not taken the correct medication for your ailment.

Some of the sanctions against the Islamic Republic have been nothing but a farce. Ban on export of free software like Facebook and Gmail for example. Who was it supposed to target and how could it have been implemented? Are software like Gmail and Facebook exported or simply used on-line?

Then there is the question of how easy is it to get round the sanctions. Again using the example above, all one had to say was they were not a resident of Iran. Bit like the landing forms when you travel to America, one of the questions asked is 'Will you be taking part in any terrorist activities?' I can not imagine who would say 'Yes' to this silly question.



Today's UN approved sanctions in my view are the continuation of the same thing,i.e. ineffective sanctions that the regime can get round. Today's sanctions were far from smart, crippling or targeted and instead provide the regime with a high moral ground and enable it to enjoy more popular support outside Iran. The root cause of all this confusion and time wasting is that these resolutions are never aimed at promoting human rights and reducing the regime's repressive powers. If that was the case we would have seen travel bans for those who have been connected to human rights abuses, we would have seen sanctions against Western companies like Nokia Siemens Network who have supplied the regime with spying equipments against dissidents and we would have seen curbs on broadcasting propaganda channels by a regime that has jammed satellite signals and denied the people of Iran of their right to receive news and information.

3 comments:

Arash said...

Totally useless. It only gives ammo to the likes of CASMII and the regime and does nothing to help the cause for freedom.

Arash

Waybec said...

Sanctions always full sort of exercising a true morality when it comes to money. And all the dirty deals that are still cut with this filthy regime! Yes, no body wants more nuclear weapons. But it's Khamanei's appalling record on oppression, human rights and farce democracy that Western leaders should more publicly attack. We have a Stalin of Islam. And yet of course Muslim sensitivities allows a murdering black shirt to thrive under the cover and excuse of it!

Neda Mehregan said...

For thirty years the West has used the excuse of the "nuclear" issue to flirt with the Islamic Republic while supporting them at the same time.

If they really wanted to put pressure on the IR, why have they not sanctioned an oil embargo? An oil embargo would cut off most of the revenue to this terrorist regime and would bring their downfall in a matter of weeks if not days.
They have not proposed this because the oil companies are making huge profits form IR deals, at the expense of the Iranian people.

The sanctions are useless and are only hurting the Iranian people.