A Washington Post story today reports that Iranian 'green' leaders are warning that sanctions will just strengthen Ahmadinejad's hand domestically. But a (pro-sanctions) source notes that Mousavi and company pretty much have to say, at least in public, that they don't want to see the Iranian people suffer any more economic pain. Meanwhile others who don't speak for the movement the way Mousavi does make the opposite case:
Now, however, some analysts said, additional, tougher sanctions might feed unrest in big cities over the government's policies, including a post-election crackdown in which dozens of opposition protesters were killed.
The country's middle and lower classes have already been hurt by a recession that many blame on economic mismanagement. Housing prices have collapsed, banks are low on cash and inflation remains in double digits. U.N. trade sanctions are damaging Iran's small import sector, which has severe problems insuring international transactions. And Iran's tech-savvy youths increasingly resent Internet restrictions.
"The government knows if sanctions do happen, it will be the biggest sign for the opposition to prove Ahmadinejad's bad management and their own righteousness," said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a government critic. He said he expects Iranian negotiators to soften their approach to world powers in Thursday's meeting in Geneva.
I'm not sure we can be confident about what the movement truly wants. Hopefully Mousavi's people are offering a more reliable view via some back channel to the West.
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COMMENTS (1)
Sanctions. Do they work? Against who [whom?], exactly?
The blind leading the blind into each and every new moral cesspool. Only some of them only pretend to be blind, don't they?
In and out of the government, in and out of the media, in and out of the Bilderbergs.
Consider this from the FAIR website:
'We Think the Price Is Worth It'
Media uncurious about Iraq policy's effects---there or here
By Rahul Mahajan
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the ... view full comment
Sanctions. Do they work? Against who [whom?], exactly?
The blind leading the blind into each and every new moral cesspool. Only some of them only pretend to be blind, don't they?
In and out of the government, in and out of the media, in and out of the Bilderbergs.
Consider this from the FAIR website:
'We Think the Price Is Worth It'
Media uncurious about Iraq policy's effects---there or here
By Rahul Mahajan
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
--60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It's also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01).
But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote--in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale--a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one's political ends--does not seem to be one that can be made in U.S. mass media.
It's worth noting that on 60 Minutes, Albright made no attempt to deny the figure given by Stahl--a rough rendering of the preliminary estimate in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the sanctions. In general, the response from government officials about the sanctions’ toll has been rather different: a barrage of equivocations, denigration of U.N. sources and implications that questioners have some ideological axe to grind.
There has also been an attempt to seize on the lowest possible numbers. In early 1998, Columbia University's Richard Garfield published a dramatically lower estimate of 106,000 to 227,000 children under five dead due to sanctions, which was reported in many papers (e.g. New Orleans Times-Picayune, 2/15/98). Later, UNICEF came out with the first authoritative report (8/99), based on a survey of 24,000 households, suggesting that the total “excess” deaths of children under 5 was about 500,000.
A Dow Jones search shows that, although some papers covered the UNICEF report, none mentioned that the previous figure had been contradicted. In fact, papers continue to cite the obsolete Garfield numbers (Baltimore Sun, 9/24/01).
george:
Aside to Michael,
Did TNR make use of that quote?
Just curious.
george walton
d/a/j