What happens when Senator Mark Kirk and Rep. Brad Sherman – the two leading advocates in Congress for sanctions that deliberately hurt the Iranian people — get together to design a new Iran sanctions package with the neoconservative “Foundation for Defense of Democracies”?

The result is legislation that would impose extraterritorial sanctions on all Iranian banks and make foreign central banks subject to a U.S. sanctions if they engage in any significant transaction with Iran.  These sanctions would build on the already draconian sanctions on Iran’s central bank that Congress passed last year, and would further compound problems that those sanctions are already causing.

Despite having an exemption for humanitarian items, the sanctions on the Iranian Central Bank are choking off sales of food, medicine, and medical devices — including even those explicitly licensed by the U.S. Treasury.  The chilling effect has been so strong that foreign banks simply won’t facilitate the transactions even though they’re perfectly legal and have the U.S. government’s stamp of approval.  Extending the extraterritorial sanctions to all Iranian banks would be the nail in the coffin for trade in these humanitarian items because there simply wouldn’t be any Iranian banks that could transfer the money needed to actually pay for these goods.

Of course, Iran and foreign countries will set up elaborate workarounds for lucrative oil sales and other major transactions, but it is much less certain whether ordinary Iranians will be able to continue purchasing imported medicine and medical devices.  After all, why would an American company even bother to apply to get a license to sell a medical device in Iran if there is no way to actually sell the device in Iran?

It is unclear if this will concern the bill’s sponsors.  After all, Israeli officials recently went on the record advocating for sanctions to literally starve ordinary Iranians in order to try to get the regime to capitulate on the nuclear issue.

As for sanctioning other countries’ central banks, the downsides are obvious enough.  Imagine how the following conversation might end:

“Hey China, stop trading with Iran or we’ll sanction your central bank. Yes, your central bank…  Umm yeah, I know you have a trillion U.S. Treasury bills…”

Soon enough we’ll hear that these sanctions are necessary to make diplomacy work and won’t spike the price of gas.  When that happens, just remember the words of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Executive Director, Mark Dubowitz, who has said that the sanctions he is advocating for “would quash any hopes for progress through engagement” and “could also shock the oil markets, possibly causing considerable political trouble for Obama in an election year.”

Cross posted from NIACampus.org Student Reporting:

Occupy AIPAC was a summit timed to coincide with the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference. Occupy AIPAC participants gathered to discuss issues, such as Iran, the Arab Uprising, Palestine and the affects of AIPAC in determining U.S. foreign policy on these topics. On Sunday, Occupy AIPAC activists rallied outside of the Walter E. Washington convention center, where hours earlier, President Obama and important names in the foreign policy world gave their speeches to the AIPAC Policy Conference attendees.

The purpose of the rally was to warn the American people of what the activists saw as the dangerous and overwhelming influence that AIPAC was having on United States’ foreign policy. Messages of justice for the Palestinian people and peace with Iran echoed throughout the event. Keynote speakers from activist organizations, musical performances, and poetry readings accompanied the long day of protest.

Although tensions were high between the opposing sides earlier that day, a patient few waited to the end of the AIPAC conference and greeted the AIPAC members as they exited the building. Despite the high emotions and impassioned speeches from earlier in the day, people from both sides of the issue came together on the sidewalks and began to respectfully share ideas, opinions, and stories.

I had the opportunity to speak with the diverse group of activists at the event. The following profiles present the various perspectives of these activists:

Name: Grant

Age: 46

From: Washington, D.C.

Occupation: Director of Research Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy

Why are you out here today?

“Because you can’t just sit in an office and blog all day, you have to come out into the street you have to take actions that are visible you have to bring people out to protest in a peaceful, non-violent way and show, in this case AIPAC attendees, that we are opposed to their initiatives to launch war on Iran, to illegal settlements, to unwarranted influence in Congress that has no regulatory oversight whatsoever.”

Advice for Obama Administration on Iran:

“He needs to open a diplomatic presence. Why don’t they open up an embassy like the one they just built in Iraq in Iran—it is an extremely important country. They need to stop taking advice from the Israelis, who are absolutely hysterical about their IAEA regulated civilian nuclear program. They need to disregard AIPAC’s political pressure and go straight to the American people and say we’re not going to let Israel drive our foreign policy; we’re going to talk to Iran.”

Obama wasn’t the only one to take on the Iran war saber rattling yesterday.  The Daily Show was also on fire last night…

The President had some choice words yesterday for those who are rattling the sabers on Iran to score political points, indicating that the White House is finally ready to stand up for a diplomatic resolution rather than allowing the contest to be measured getting bullied into a war of choice:

Now, what’s said on the campaign trail — those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities.  They’re not Commander-in-Chief.  And when I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I’m reminded of the costs involved in war. … This is not a game.  There’s nothing casual about it.  And when I see some of these folks who have a lot of bluster and a lot of big talk, but when you actually ask them specifically what they would do, it turns out they repeat the things that we’ve been doing over the last three years, it indicates to me that that’s more about politics than actually trying to solve a difficult problem.

Now, the one thing that we have not done is we haven’t launched a war.  If some of these folks think that it’s time to launch a war, they should say so.  And they should explain to the American people exactly why they would do that and what the consequences would be.  Everything else is just talk.

It’s a positive sign that the White House finally realizes it must take the pro-war crowd to task over its saber rattling and frame the Iran debate around resolving the problem, not merely ratcheting up pressure and getting bullied into war.  I wrote about the need for Obama to call his opponents’ bluff on Iran in October 2010:

Obama has by and large perpetuated a political metric that defines success on Iran only in terms of pressure. Only if Obama raises the consequences of the dire alternative to a successful engagement strategy — war with Iran — and stakes out a new path to create his own political space for diplomacy, can the president effectively navigate the new reality in Congress and pursue a successful Iran agenda.

As if on cue, the some day that Obama made his positive remarks, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-KY) suggested the Senate should begin debate on an Iran war authorization:

“I made a recommendation last night for something that I think might convince the Iranians that we’re serious about it, and that would be to debate and vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force. That doesn’t guarantee that force would be used, but it certainly would be a credible step in the direction saying we view this as a very serious matter.”

In this episode, we chat with Jahangir Golestan-Parast, producer & director of the documentary film “Bam.6.6″. Nine years after a devastating earthquake struck the ancient city of Bam, this film not only remembers the 40,000 plus victims that were lost but also creates a humanitarian bridge between cultures and breaks down stereotypical images fostered by political agenda.

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Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) went on Morning Joe this morning to convey an important message: engage Iran.

“We just got out of one war, we’re trying to get out of another one, we do not need a third…diplomacy is the right option,” he said.  Ellison explained, ”No one says diplomacy is easy, but going to war would be catastrophic,” and negotiations are the best way to prevent war and prevent nuclear Iran.

The Congressman discussed his bipartisan effort with Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) to call for the President to reinvigorate diplomacy with Iran:

“If you listen to Martin Dempsey, who’s the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the fact is that an attack on Iran would be destabilizing and the attack would not achieve the objectives of…stopping the nuclear program.  So we need to avert that possibility from the very beginning.  That’s why Walter Jones and I have come together and organized many of our colleagues on a letter to the President to really be strong on diplomacy. And to go back to that effort which the President very wisely started which is direct, bilateral engagement on Iran.”

The Ellison-Jones letter has been endorsed by groups including NIAC, FCNL, J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Just Foreign Policy, Peace Action, CREDO, and ELCA.

Ellison said the President must be firm with our allies on the need for diplomacy to prevent war, explaining that many Israeli generals and military experts also believe “an attack on Iran would destabilizing for them and the wrong way to go”:

“What the President has to tell the Israeli leadership is: ‘Look, if you’re going to sign us up for a protracted military conflict that you can start but cannot finish, we’ve got to be in on it from the beginning.  And we say diplomacy is what we need to do now…The United States, the strongest military on Earth, should never be in a position where it is not in control of its own destiny.  The fact is, we cannot let even an ally, an important ally like Israel, drag us into war that we think diplomacy can serve better in.”

You can ask your Member of Congress to sign the Ellison-Jones letter by emailing them here or call them at 1-855-68 NO WAR.

A YNet article, “Israeli officials: Starve Iranians to stop nukes” is reopening the debate about what is the goal of our broad sanctions regime against Iran, with some saying such sentiments reek of collective punishment.

But really, the cat has been out of the bag on this one for a long time.  Broad, indiscriminate, “crippling” sanctions on Iran have always been designed to inflict pain on ordinary Iranians.  The leading supporters of crippling sanctions admitted years ago that  collective punishment was exactly the point.

See the rationale for crippling sanctions as explained by Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), when he was asked in August 2010 why the Obama Administration was resisting his aggressive push for an oil embargo on Iran:

Q: The oil embargo or quarantine sounds like a very plausible alternative … why the opposition from the administration?

Kirk: Um, in a discussion I recently had with administrative officials they said we would feel worried that it would hurt the Iranian people… (laughs)

But it’s that actual pain that I think has to be imposed, in my view, a gasoline quarantine would immediately trigger anti-American demonstrations in downtown Tehran, organized by the regime.

But over time the regime fears large groups of people gathering because as you know a mob can turn very quickly.

When you hear that you can’t get enough gasoline that day, and you read in the state controlled paper that it’s Barack Obama’s fault, you’ll be mad at Barack Obama that week.

But as your factory closed down and as the refrigerator starts to run out, the naturally tendency of any people is turn to their own leader and say “fix this”.

I cannot feed a nuclear weapon to my family. It is more important to feed my family than eat nuclear weapons. And that’s the dilemma you want to put them in.

And don’t forget Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA), author of legislation aimed at crashing Iranian civilian planes, who explained:

“Critics [of the sanctions] argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people.  Quite frankly, we need to do just that.”

The irony here is that, particularly in Kirk’s case, the supporters of crippling sanctions all claim to be supporters of human rights in Iran.  They just don’t support the right for Iranians to eat.

It is also interesting to note the two shining examples of broad sanctions we have seen over the last two decades: Iraq – where a ruthless dictator thrived while his people died under brutal sanctions, and ultimately was only toppled through trillion dollar U.S. military invasion and occupation; and North Korea – where a ruthless regime continues to stay fat,  happy, and nuclear armed while its subjects starve to death.

In the sixteenth episode of “Let’s Talk Iran”, we sit down with NIAC’s very own Trita Parsi to discuss his latest book, “A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran”.  Trita uncovers the previously unknown story of American and Iranian negotiations during Obama’s early years as president, the calculations behind the two nations’ dealings, and the real reasons for their current stalemate. “A Single Roll of the Dice” is available in hardcover and on Kindle. To learn more about Trita Parsi, visit www.tritaparsi.com.

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Iran Announces Nuclear Program Advances

Iran began loading domestically manufactured nuclear fuel rods into its Tehran Research Reactor, which produces medical isotopes used in cancer treatments. In a ceremony broadcast on state TV, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad placed the first fuel rod into the reactor. He praised this achievement as an important step toward Iran’s goal of mastering the complete nuclear fuel cycle. (USATODAY 2/15)

During the ceremony, Iran also announced that it had began using advanced, “fourth generation” carbon fiber centrifuge models at its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. Iranian officials claim the new centrifuge models will increase their enriched uranium production capacity by operating at a higher speed. However, some Western nuclear experts have cast doubts on these claims and assert that Iran has failed to demonstrate evidence of less advanced second- or third-generation centrifuge capabilities. (CBS News 2/15)

Iranian state media also reported that Iran is ready to formally announce that the Fordo uranium enrichment facility, located in a mountain bunker near the city of Qom, is fully operational. Following an inspection of the facility last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran is enriching uranium up to 20%, which is the level needed to produce fuel for the medical research reactor. (Washington Post 2/15)