What to do about Iran? Should it be isolated? Should the newAmerican president in January President open up a more extensive dialogue with it? Or should it be a mixture of both isolation and minimal dialogue? And what are the realities and what has happened so far? In this Guest Voice post Iranian freelance writer and blogger Kourosh Ziabari takes a look at the issue.TMV runs Guest Voice posts of various viewpoints. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
Did The U.S. Really Isolate Iran?
by Kourosh Ziabari
Iran is moving towards obtaining nuclear technology and that is not favorable for the US and its allies.
In their addresses, notes, lectures, interviews and meetings with the world heads of states, US officials perpetually express the deepest regret and sorrow that Iran is just a few steps away from producing nuclear weapons and becoming a threat to global peace and stability.
Perhaps the tremendous experience of US atomic strike on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made the American statesmen and American news media fearful that a same disaster may happen to them and that it’s more rational to prevent an atomic hit rather than coming up with a response. But it seems that they’re really on the wrong path. Iran is not the country to be targeted by the rhetoric of US and affiliated media.
You may have heard the famous story of Pharaoh and Moses.
After his terrible nightmare and hearing the interpretation, Pharaoh ordered his attendants and soldiers to search all the homes around Egypt for new-born infants and put them out of the way. They did and killed all of the new-born boys. But they missed one; the one set adrift on the Nile by his mother to be protected.
Pharaoh was satisfied with his wise idea’s result but didn’t recognize that the rescued baby who was found later on the Nile shore and attracted “Asyia” would someday become the abolisher of his monarchy.
The story of US is totally the same.
They are backing the Middle East’s major depositor of nuclear warheads completely, (according to FAS, Israel currently possesses 170 nuclear warheads) and on the other hand are at odds with Iran. IAEA’s head declared 12 times that there is no sign of deviation in Iran’s nuclear program….
Even so, you can often find ridiculous and strange stories illustrating the American hostility against Iran; a media-backed “war of words.” Some examples:
* The dossier of Hamed Haddadi
The NBA-based “Memphis Grizzlies'” contract with the leading 2008 Olympic basketball rebounder Hamed Haddadi of Iran astonished the observers of “outward” darkening relations between Tehran and Washington. The news was carried by thousands of American websites, newspapers and TV stations.
At the beginning of 2008 Olympics basketball games, when the first murmurs of Hamed Haddadi’s enrollment to the Memphis were whispered, some in the US media claimed that the US government would never allow any trade with the “enemy” and Haddadi should forget the sweet dream of playing in NBA. Although the Iranians always new that gossiping and intrigue are major parts of American media agenda, they almost believed that their favorite player would be kept from joining the NBA.
At that time, the NBA’s board of directors announced several times that bargaining with the enemy was not at all viable, and Hamed Haddadi would not be allowed to be the first Iranian player ever joining NBA.
Most sports fans believed the big lie in throes of the “word war,” but a few days later the NBA’s board of directors announced that the legal limitations for Hamed Haddadi joining the NBA would be removed. And then, a few weeks later, Haddadi signed an undisclosed deal with the Grizzlies as simple as that. Again, everybody forget the outcries and screams of American media who had claimed that Hamed Haddadi would be rejected forever and must “return home”.
Accepting that the White House-run media are counted as the chief leaders of offensive propaganda on Iran and are being paid for, however such dubious acclamations from the American side need more investigation to discover their roots. But the mass of people neither have enough time nor adequate interest to conduct research; they believe everything they hear or read! So that’s a duty of independent journalists and writers to investigate and unveil the concealed facts.
* Iran-US trade
The US “says” that it has imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iranian banks, companies, firms and corporations to stop Tehran from pursuing the nuclear technology.
We know that what a “sanction” is; it should have negative economic and financial effects on the embargoed side and quicken its political isolation until the final exhaustion and resignation. But was this goal achieved practically?
The latest published figures by the US Treasury revealed a tenfold increase of Iran-US trades under President Bush — and proved that the idea that imposing sanctions on Iran are just “rhetoric” rather than “practical” tools to stop Iran.
In the past five years, White House has mobilized all of its media arms to intensify anti-Iran propaganda by providing global opinions with a muddled and altered view of “the axis of evil”, but stats of US trade affairs with Iran show otherwise.
According to US Census Bureau statistics, the total amount of US exports to Iran increased up to 490 million dollars during 2004 to 2008, while it has imported 720 million dollars of merchants from Iran n the same period.
The major US exports to Iran are including aircraft parts, sculpture and artistic materials, perfumes and cosmetics, movies and furs. while the imports are huge chunks of saffron, pistachio, carpet, petrochemical productions, gas and oil.
* Iran and the rest of world
The US is the not the only country dealing with Iran as financial and cultural partner, but it’s the only country that believes it has succeeded in isolating Iran and dissuading its western powers from having ties with the 3rd world’s largest oil exporter. This claim also needs a bit of investigation and inspection.
The question is: is Iran really losing its connections with the western countries due to the US pressure? Follow me to find out everything!
1- The Iranian giant carmaker IKCO which is ranked 10th in the UNIDO list of major automobile manufacturers, exported its domestic produced cars to 40 countries worldwide in the past 4 years to countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Bulgaria and Poland which are all EU members. The Iranian car “Samand” has also customers in China, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Persian Gulf countries as well.
2- In May 2008, Iran kicked off a common commercial bank with Germany in Tehran and established joint chambers of finance and economy with Netherlands, Slovakia, Belgium and Finland.
3- In the February 2008, Chinese government announced that it has exported more than 40 Billion dollars of automobile products to various countries and issued a list of its top export destinations. Iran placed in the 6th place upper than Netherlands, UK and Canada in the issued list.
4. In the August 2008, the Italian WTD Company and Pars Petrochemical Company of Iran signed an MOU to establish a desalination system unit in Pars Special Economic Energy Zone of Persian Gulf borderlines. The Italian company has made 220 million-euro worth of investments in Iran during the past 4 years.
5 In the late 2006, EU trade chief Peter Mandelson warned that Iran should “think twice” about imposing a boycott on Danish goods or canceling contracts with European countries, right after Iran announced officially that it would cut its financial ties with Denmark over the controversial and insulting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
6. Switzerland’s Elektrizitaetsgesellschaft Laufenburg and the National Iranian Gas Export Company signed a substantial gas deal which was a record in the history of bilateral relations between the two sides It is said that Iran will start selling half a billion cubic meters of gas to Switzerland in 2009 and the sale is planned to increase to over five billion cubic meters in 2012.
* US isn’t loyal to itself!
Keeping all the above facts in mind, the interesting thing is that the US itself didn’t remain loyal to its embargos and used the means of sports to perpetuate the channels of bilateral relations with Iran as the world’s leading Oil and Gas producer and the #1 ally of Russia in the region of Middle East.
The Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns at a 2008 July 9 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on U.S. relations with Iran said: “Sports exchanges are one tool to help rebuild bridges between U.S. and Iranian societies after 30 years of estrangement”
The US table tennis federation invited the Iran national ping-pong team to participate in 2008 American open cup, a few weeks later NBA invited the Iran national basketball team to take part in Rocky Mountain Revue cup and finally signed deal with Iranian 2.12 m tower Hamed Haddadi as the newest member of Memphis Grizzlies roster for the 2008-2009 season.
But this isn’t the whole story.
The US treasury house announced in the late mid-2008 that up to 20 American professional basketball players have been employed by the Iranian teams to play in Iran Basketball Super league of 2008 season.
These plays are mainly the former NBA players such as Chris Herren, Ed Elisma, Torraye Braggs, Arthur Long, Omar Sneed, Robert Whaley and Jabari Smith.
Therefore, these facts indicate that the US hostile rhetoric failed to isolate Iran and the country is on its own way toward economic flourish and progress without any need to nuclear weapons.
While the former aged President Ronald Reagan said that Israel is keeping more than 170 nuclear warheads without joining NPT, the American lobbies eluded to prosecute the infractions of their Israeli ally and tried their best to mislead public opinion and press Iran by pushing the issue with the UNSC, EU and IAEA although they didn’t find any evidence that Persians are striving for nuclear weapons.
Isolating Iran by imposing sanctions or urging the European allies to cut down their relations with this major oil and gas producer are more like mental and media war tactics rather than being realistic.
In fact, America’s politicians and statesmen are wise and experienced enough to know full well that cutting ties with a country that’s located on the most vital spot of the world and enjoys a 7500 years old civilization is not possible at all — so it is necessary to compromise with it.
Among many other things, Kourosh Ziabari has appeared on the BBC outlook program and is a member of Stony Brook University Publications editorial board. His writings have been translated into Italian, German , Arabic, Spanish and Bulgarian and have been published on several websites and online magazines.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.