Iranian Bakers Strike
This comes from EU Referendum, a colleague to The Moderate Voice, as Weblog Award Winner for best UK Blog, who in turns gets it from a blogger in Canada. Hat tip Dr. Barnett.
“>Worse than bread riots
From Last weekend.
Bread riots spell disaster for all. Revolutions start with bread riots and revolutions lead to civil wars and civil wars lead to oppression in both camps and so on. So what can be worse than bread riots?Strikes by bakers, of course. That is what happened in Teheran this week-end, with bakers pouring out on the streets to protest against the government’s control flour, wheat and other ingredients, necessary for making bread.
Control of such basics would indicate that there are now real shortages in Iran. Let them eat nuclear weapons or attend Holocaust-denying conferences may not turn out to be a particularly catchy phrase.
I can’t help but revisit the notion that if the Sunni oil producing countries would just increase production and force the price down they could force Iran to be a lot more cooperative.
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5 Responses to “Iranian Bakers Strike”
I can’t help but think that this idea is based on two basic premises:
1. Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia are interested in greater stability in the region.
2. Sunni countries are willing to lose money for the sake of greater stability, messing with Iran and helping the US.
Both points could be argued, but I think neither (most especially 2) are forgone conclusions.
A former revolutionary [one of the American hostage takers] ran a poll and found three quarters of the Iranians favored better relations with the US, he was imprisoned for releasing the poll results. The Guardian Council runs the country without too much concern about the opinions of the people but Ayatollah Khameini is ailing so who knows what changes are in store. Ahmadinejad is too radical for most Iranians, but with candidates who want to run taken off the ballot by the Guardian Council I don’t know how far any reform movement can go. You can expect students to be restive, when other classes join in things can begin to change.
Well, according to the righties, they’re best buddies with the French. Maybe they’ve been reading up on the French Revolution?
To elaborate and add to the points made by Lynx and grognard:
1. Another variable is whether or not the Saudis actually have the capacity to expand their oil production. A lot of analysts believe that they’re bluffing when they say that they still have huge reserves (and there’s some evidence of this: apparently they are increasingly using horizontal drilling and water drilling techniques to get the oil out of the ground, and it’s even reached the point where some of the oil is unusable due to the amount of water that is being pumped down to build up the pressure.) Saudi Arabia is the one country that has really had all the major reserves and it’s now questionable whether their oil fields may have peaked and they may no longer have the ability to significantly raise production to affect the global market.
2. Then, as Lynx mentioned, is the question that if the Saudis can do it, are they willing to do it? And part of that also revolves around the US: would our govt and corporate interests acquiesce if SA made this move, given that it runs counter to the “80% solution” and it would harm the Iraqi economy as well? Plus of course harming US oil company interests…
3. Even if this plan was put into effect, would starving the Iranians really work? We have seen that in Cuba, sanctions have harmed the people but not Castro’s govt, and in Iraq, sanctions would have resulted in a humanitarian crisis were it not for the (severely flawed and corrupted) Oil for Food program, and still Saddam was in power until he was taken out militarily by an outside force. In other words, haven’t we learned the lesson that dictatorships can still survive even while their people go without basic necessities? Sure, these scenarios increase the pressure by building resentment of the govt by the people, but when ruling with an iron fist the dictators can survive the resentment by making the people fear them.
In spite of the appearance of being a republic, the Iranians simply traded one form of tyranny for another. All real power lies with the Guardian Council and no election will change it. Only a counter-revolution will make Iran a real republic. I wish them well if they ever decide to have it but believe that we should stay out of it, only concerning ourselves with limiting their nuclear program if we can.