Last summer, Washington told about some new sanctions against Iran and notably about an embargo on gasoline if diplomacy would fail at the last chance meeting that took place on the 1st October in Geneva. An embargo on gasoline, a source of serious social disturbance, would be almost a disaster for the regime. However it’s necessary to specify that it was not the first time that Washington has mentioned this kind of measure. Long time before Obama, Bush told about it in 2003. If the threat repeats endlessly without coming true, it’s because Washington doesn’t want to overthrow the mullahs but it wants to intimidate them and thus urge them to accept relations restoration -that was also mentioned under Bush presidency, which appears as the step prior to an agreement the United States needs to control the Islamic world which is always ready to listen to the mullahs’ regime. This agreement’s goal is the ability to trouble Chinese Muslims who live in the Xinjiang oil region.

Such as on the previous times this embargo issue was raised, the mullahs didn’t make any step backward because in case of agreement and relations restoration with the United States, they would need to open their political space US made Iranian Islamists. In such case, the mullahs would loose a part of their power and also the outstanding economic privileges that go with it. Since they would loose everything, they resist any threat including the embargo one. Into such nerve game, they managed to defeat Washington which was finally forced to imagine a new script to postpone the embargo on gasoline.

Favourable but… | The script Washington selected was to drift stealthily from unilateral sanctions to UNO sanctions and then the allies of the United States would be brought in while some claim they are opposed and some appear to be mixed !

According to this script, Russia which became an ally of the United States thanks to a deal regarding Georgia and ABM plays its own part of State that is always opened to dialogue -except with Georgia. Turkey was given the part of opponent to the US dictate with the ulterior motive to grant it with a regional stature that would be susceptible to compete with Tehran -this is at least what Washington wishes. Brazil obtained the part of anti-American State so to compete with Chavez. According to this complicated script, in which objectives seem to be numerous, Europe plays the part it has already played in the past : the divided sceptical. Bad news for Clotilde Reiss, France is among the United States’ rare allies that militate in favour of sanctions.

This explains how, when the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt, whose country occupies the UE presidency until the end of the year, mentioned the necessity to show a great caution regarding possible sanctions against Iran, Pierre Lellouche, the French Secretary of EU Affairs, told about the need to establish European sanctions “from now on !” At the same time, Gérard Araud, the French Ambassador at the UNO, requested the immediate adoption of a “new resolution that would make the Security Council introduce sanctions”. He was then facing a Russian representative who appeared very reluctant because Russia advocates dialogue only !

For greater safety, Obama mentioned recently the necessity to postpone sanctions to a date on which the country “would have solved its domestic problems”. Yesterday Carl Bildt also adopted such position !

This comical act convinced the mullahs’ regime that sanctions were far away. It didn’t appreciate it because this means the continuation of existing sanctions in a logic of attrition war whose outcome could be what it fears the most : a weakening that would force it to give in one day. As it’s the case each time Washington plays the game of exhausting appeasement, Tehran’s answer was to opt for an offensive script of crisis deepening in order to cause an escalation that would scare the West. For this purpose, the regime’s boss Rafsanjani stated that Tehran remained /i>“opened to dialogue but it would never renounce neither to its nuclear program nor to any equipment it announced” -innuendo the 10 enrichment plants that Ahmadinejad mentioned last week with the aim of deepening crisis.

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The french version of this article :
 Iran : Plus de menaces que de sanctions
 (11 DÉCEMBRE 2009)