Obama turns up heat on Iran

For the second time this week President Barack Obama has heightened his rhetoric on Iran sanctions. On the heels of his meetings with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, President Obama expressed his desire to implement a UN sanctions regime against Iran in the very near future ("within weeks"). The U.S. has yet to completely marshal unanimous support for sanctions among key players in the international community. Key members of the UN Security Council (Russia and China) and the up-and-coming group of developing countries known as the BRIC group (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) have been somewhat reluctant to sign on to Obama's plan for sanctions. Support from these countries, however, will ultimately be necessary for sanctions to be even remotely successful. Each of the above states has the capacity to undermine dramatic unilateral actions by the Americans. As such, representatives from the U.S. are currently engaged in spirited discussions with their international counterparts.

Today, in an interview on the CBS "Early Show" President Obama re-iterated his comments from earlier in the week. The president expressed fear that Iran was heading in the direction of the so-called "Japan Option," which refers to a state of nuclear latency in which all of the technology to develop a bomb is known and quickly actionable, yet no bombs are in a state of readiness. "If they've got nuclear weapons-building capacity -- and they are flouting international resolutions, that creates huge destabilizing effects in the region and will trigger an arms race in the Middle East that is bad for U.S. national security but is also bad for the entire world," President Obama said. Sanctions, he advocated, are now the best available option for dealing with such a potentiality given Iran's reluctance to accept America's "outstretched hand" of engagement.

When questioned on the efficacy of sanctions, President Obama largely skirted the issue, stating "the idea here is just to keep on turning up the pressure. The regime has become more isolated since I came into office." The proposed "crippling" sanctions regime does not, in this author's opinion, do enough to distinguish between the Iranian government and the Iranian people. The people, who already endure the constraining forces of sanctions on their economy are increasingly likely to bear the bulk of the cost from President Obama's "turning up the pressure." Moreover, sanctions will embolden the government and provide a diversion from the egregious violations of human and civil rights they are inflicting. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will surely be able to spin the sanctions into support for their draconian regime. The Obama administration should, therefore, reconsider the type of sanctions regime it is trying to impose if it is indeed fixed on the idea of sanctions in practice. Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) has proposed legislation in the House, which would make many useful modifications to the sanctions regime such that they do not disproportionately affect the Iranian populace. The bill, known as the "Stand with the Iranian People Act"(SWIPA), has unsurprisingly met with little support.