The Security Council has been adopting sanctions against Iran for 4 years. The 5 most powerful States in the world has been adopting resolutions including sanctions against the mullahs for 4 years. And the situation didn’t better at all because not only Tehran didn’t shrink back but also it intensified its nuclear activities. This 4-years long failure is due to the fact that the concerned States are privileged partners of the oil mullahs or they hope to become their partners such as it’s the case of the United States. Thus none of them will dare to adopt sanctions that would endanger the regime they need : consequently efficient sanctions are much avoided and resolutions can go straight in the bin such as Ahmadinejad expressed it so relevantly.

Why are those sanctions ineffective ? Firstly they have spared since 4 years the Iranian business banks. The latest resolution which “was inspired from the Americans according to the AFP” quotes at last one Iranian business bank, the FIRST EAST EXPORT BANK, which is based in Malaysian free zone. However it’s question of a bank that has lost already some of its efficiency because it has been sanctioned by the Americans since November 2009.

Another problem is those sanctions target solely the opaque organizations of an opaque regime which can change anytime the names of those targeted organizations or create dummy companies that would operate instead of them (besides the latest resolution spotted three organizations of that kind). In addition, the targeted organizations are companies which are specialized in material conversion and which are impossible to sanction because they have no connexion abroad. Those sanctions are ineffective as well because they target mostly the chairmen of those organizations, people who are interchangeable and of whom no photo exists. For instance, the present resolution extended the list of the targeted entities by adding one man and 18 new organizations with generic names such as “Group of special industries” that even don’t have any precise address.

The UNO sanctions of those past 4 years are ineffective as well because they forbid the sale to Iran of several kinds of weapons Iran has stopped purchasing since 1991 because it got the patents so to manufacture them domestically. In this field, the latest resolution states that it added battle tanks to its list while this weapon already appeared in the list of the resolution 1747 dated of March 2007. There not only inefficiency but also lies in order to avoid deepening existing sanctions.

One of the most tremendous examples of such resort to lie in order to avoid deepening the sanctions that were already adopted is the announcement in the present resolution of the reinforcement of the search in Iranian ocean-going cargos. It’s relevant to specify that inspections should be made in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLS), i.e. in accordance with the flag of the ship (registration country of the vessel) which can be Iran or one of its partners. Thus the key measure doesn’t have any sense and is misleading. As they know it won’t have any effect on Iran, so to justify in advance its efficiency, the Americans and the French published the same article in the New York Times and Le Monde about flag changes and names of concerned vessels in order to make them avoid sanctions. We could read in the past such kind of article that disparaged the embargo on gasoline which is the sole sanction that can make the mullahs retreat.

The dishonesty of such approach lays in the fact that the 5 great powers, notably the European ones, which assess they are concerned by Iranian sea transport pay great interest to vessels but not to their contents which pile up on the quays of their country such as we mentioned it yesterday. So instead of searching what is close by, they complain about how hard it is to search on the ocean !

The point is there is no will to harm the mullahs : Europeans, Chinese and Russian appreciate this regime because of its opposition to the American hegemony and the United States, which is far from being spiteful, is looking for allying with this regime in order to reverse the trend and crush Europeans, Chinese and Russians. The mullahs appear as useful allies for each one among the 5. Each one is keen on harassing them a bit without going too far : the Americans in order to make them change their alliance, the others to prevent this catastrophe from happening (because of their oil interests). As long as each party will not renounce to such approach, there will be resolutions and sanctions that can go straight in the bin.

© WWW.IRAN-RESIST.ORG
The french version of this article :
 Iran : Des sanctions bonnes pour la poubelle !
 (10 JUIN 2010)