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  • 27 July 2012
  • Posted By Roshan Alemi
  • 0 Comments
  • Sanctions

How Sanctions Actually Help the Regime

Although Iran has been under some form of sanctions since 1979, today it faces indiscriminate sanctions so severe that ordinary Iranian citizens are being hurt the most. Reports have already indicated that sanctions are adversely affecting public health, personal finance, public education, and progressive social movements in Iran. Still, Western lawmakers claim that this is the unfortunate price that must be paid in order for regime change in Iran to be possible. Their argument is simple and unproven: economic pressure will trigger popular unrest that eventually overthrows the regime. However, the demonstrated reality is quite different: sanctions are lending power to the regime, and in turn crippling the people who are crying for change.

In the past, the government’s of sanctioned countries have been able to manipulate the effects of sanctions to reward supporters and disproportionally weaken opposition. Political scientist Dan Drezner explains: “In authoritarian regimes, leaders had an incentive to create private and excludable goods for supporters, as opposed to public goods for the mass citizenry.” Robert Worth, a journalist for the New York Times, notes: “Ordinary Iranians complain that the sanctions are hurting them, while those at the top are unscathed, or even benefit. Many wealthy Iranians made huge profits in recent weeks by buying dollars at the government rate (available to insiders) and then selling them for almost twice as many rials on the soaring black market.”

In addition to the regime’s ability to manipulate sanctions to their benefit, women and the middle class have emerged as the two groups most severely affected by sanctions.  Both groups are fundamental in Iran’s quest for progressive social and political change, and the regime consistently fights to repress these efforts. Sanctions help the regime’s efforts by impeding, and often reversing, the progress that these groups have struggled to make.

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  • 25 July 2012
  • Posted By Roshan Alemi
  • 0 Comments
  • Human Rights in Iran, Sanctions, US-Iran War

Sanctioning Iranian Women

Recently, the International Civil Society Action Network  (ICAN), provided an analysis of the effects sanctions have had in Iran, focusing in part on the impact of sanctions on Iranian women.

The report, “Killing them Softly: The Stark Impact of Sanctions on the Lives of Ordinary Iranians,” points to the wide range of direct ways sanctions are harming ordinary Iranians such as restricting access to foreign-made medicine in Iran and severe economic recession.

Sanctions, ICAN says, weaken society, not the state, and is undermining U.S. and EU credibility among Iranians.  “With the impact of current sanctions seeping into every day life now, many Iranians consider them to be a profoundly insidious and destructive force and source of basic human rights violations, affecting a wide cross section of Iranians.”

According to the report, it is Iranian women who are bearing the brunt of the economic and social punishment of sanctions.  The sanctions, ICAN says, are marginalizing women by pushing them out of the job market and limiting their access to education. With women’s education as a “key engine of socio-political change,” sanctions are impeding progressive change for women and the greater society in Iran. Thus, in addition to all the detrimental direct effects, “externally imposed sanctions will allow conservatives to further their regressive social agenda,” and will limit progressive social change within Iran.

“The US and EU have been strong proponents of the global women, peace and security agenda with the development of priorities and action plans to ensure women’s empowerment,” reads the report. “But sanctions undermine and contravene these policies. The contradictory nature of US and EU rhetoric, policies and actions increase the Iranian public’s suspicion about them, and credence to charges of hypocrisy.”

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Tell Google: Stop playing Persian Gulf name games!

May 14, 2012
Larry Page
Chief Executive Officer
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, California 94043

Dear Mr. Page:

It has come to our attention that Google has begun omitting the title of the Persian Gulf from its Google Maps application. This is a disconcerting development given the undisputed historic and geographic precedent of the name Persian Gulf, and the more recent history of opening up the name to political, ethnic, and territorial disputes. However unintentionally, in adopting this practice, Google is participating in a dangerous effort to foment tensions and ethnic divisions in the Middle East by politicizing the region’s geographic nomenclature. Members of the Iranian-American community are overwhelmingly opposed to such efforts, particularly at a time when regional tensions already have been pushed to the brink and threaten to spill over into conflict. As the largest grassroots organization in the Iranian-American community, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) calls on Google to not allow its products to become propaganda tools and to immediately reinstate the historically accurate, apolitical title of “Persian Gulf” in all of its informational products, including Google Maps.

Historically, the name “Persian Gulf” is undisputed. The Greek geographer and astronomer Ptolemy referencing in his writings the “Aquarius Persico.” The Romans referred to the "Mare Persicum." The Arabs historically call the body of water, "Bahr al-Farsia." The legal precedent of this nomenclature is also indisputable, with both the United Nations and the United States Board of Geographic Names confirming the sole legitimacy of the term “Persian Gulf.” Agreement on this matter has also been codified by the signatures of all six bordering Arab countries on United Nations directives declaring this body of water to be the Persian Gulf.

But in the past century, and particularly at times of escalating tensions, there have been efforts to exploit the name of the Persian Gulf as a political tool to foment ethnic division. From colonial interests to Arab interests to Iranian interests, the opening of debate regarding the name of the Persian Gulf has been a recent phenomenon that has been exploited for political gain by all sides. Google should not enable these politicized efforts.

In the 1930s, British adviser to Bahrain Sir Charles Belgrave proposed to rename the Persian Gulf, “Arabian Gulf,” a proposal that was rejected by the British Colonial and Foreign offices. Two decades later, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company resurrected the term during its dispute with Mohammad Mossadegh, the Iranian Prime Minister whose battle with British oil interests would end in a U.S.-sponsored coup d'état that continues to haunt U.S.-Iran relations. In the 1960s, the title “Arabian Gulf” became central to propaganda efforts during the Pan-Arabism era aimed at exploiting ethnic divisions in the region to unite Arabs against non-Arabs, namely Iranians and Israelis. The term was later employed by Saddam Hussein to justify his aims at territorial expansion. Osama Bin Laden even adopted the phrase in an attempt to rally Arab populations by emphasizing ethnic rivalries in the Middle East.

We have serious concerns that Google is now playing into these efforts of geographic politicization. Unfortunately, this is not the first time Google has stirred controversy on this topic. In 2008, Google Earth began including the term “Arabian Gulf” in addition to Persian Gulf as the name for the body of water. NIAC and others called on you then to stop using this ethnically divisive propaganda term, but to no avail. Instead of following the example of organizations like the National Geographic Society, which in 2004 used term “Arabian Gulf” in its maps but recognized the error and corrected it, Google has apparently decided to allow its informational products to become politicized.

Google should rectify this situation and immediately include the proper name for the Persian Gulf in Google Maps and all of its informational products. The exclusion of the title of the Persian Gulf diminishes your applications as informational tools, and raises questions about the integrity and accuracy of information provided by Google.

We strongly urge you to stay true to Google’s mission – “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” – without distorting or politicizing that information. We look forward to an explanation from you regarding the recent removal of the Persian Gulf name from Google Maps and call on you to immediately correct this mistake.

Sincerely,

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