Successful Defiance: The True Origins of US Hostility Toward Iran

In 1979, the United States and the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran severed their diplomatic relations. Since then, tensions have risen and fallen, but the present is without doubt among the most hostile periods of the relationship. President Bush has taken to a policy of threats and posturing, where Clinton took a more reserved, although equally harsh position on the issue. Many scholars find the origins of the poor relationship lie in the 1979 hostage crisis, which sparked a period of intense distrust and animosity between the two countries. The history of the issue, so framed, becomes a tit-for-tat game. The beginning of the relevant period is marked by an act of Iranian hostility and aggression against innocent American embassy staff who were merely doing their jobs. Thereafter, the United States developed a deep distrust for Iran, suspicious of its intentions to develop weapons of mass destruction and even conventional military capabilities. Acting out of blind altruism and selfless devotion to all humanity, the United States has attempted to entice Iran to stop supporting terrorist groups, respect human rights, and cease its presumably ongoing efforts to secretly develop nuclear weapons.

As we shall see, the standard version of the history which I have just relayed bears scant resemblance to the facts. In reality, the primary motives behind US policy have to do with preserving its dominance over the Middle East specifically, which enables it to maintain its imperial system around the world more broadly. This meant fashioning Iran into a dependent client, helping to preserve US control over vital energy supplies by beating back forces who challenge this control. Since the overthrow of that dependent client by a leadership that refuses to be subjected to US control, US policy toward Iran has been unrelentingly hostile. After supporting the barbaric invasion of the country by Saddam Hussein, including selling him chemical and biological weapons, United States policy toward Iran has remained fixated on strangulating the Iranian economy in every way that is within our means, including attempting to force our allies to join in. The goal, in both war and peace, has been to maximize the damage to Iran, an objective whose fulfillment has been tempered only by the utter limits of our power. In short, since the Iranian revolution in 1979, the US has attempted to crush Iran by every means it deems necessary and feasible. The reasons for this hostility are explored here in detail.

The roots of US global power stem from the unprecedented dominance it achieved in the wake of World War II. It was clear very early in the war that the US would emerge as the dominant world power. Extensive planning began in 1939, carrying on until 1945, between the State Department and Council on Foreign Relations. In remaking the postwar world, the United States sought to craft a new international order in which it would “hold unquestioned power.”[1] As much of the world as possible was to become part of a “Grand Area,” which would be subordinated to the needs of the US economy, and in which US business interests would thrive. It would encompass the entire Western Hemisphere, the Far East, the former British Empire, and as much of Eurasia as possible. In this sphere, only the United States would be permitted to dominate regional systems, and thus it would preside over “an informal empire knitted together by private enterprise and corporate investment.”[2] To ensure the prosperity of US business, “various components would fulfill their functions” to the US economy by serving “as industrial centers, as markets and sources of raw materials, or as dependent states pursuing their regional interests within the overall framework of order managed by the United States.”[3]

There were several threats to US domination of the Grand Area that needed to be addressed by postwar planners. Firstly, the USSR was a perceived threat, in part because of “its very existence as a great power controlling an imperial system which could not be incorporated within the Grand Area,” and in part because of “its occasional efforts to expand its power.”[4] There were also potential internal rivals, Europe and Japan. Should either become independent, and willing to challenge the role which Washington has prescribed for them, the US would become a second-rate power. This threat is at least partially avoided by maintaining control of global energy supplies, a substantial source of power and influence. In fact, the ability of the United States, through corporations protected by state policy, to seize control of a large portion of global energy resources in the wake of the destruction of World War II, including the vast Saudi reserves, had a large hand in catapulting it into its present position of global leadership. As Roosevelt Administration “oil czar” Harold Ickes advised the President, the “Middle East presented an important key to postwar economic problems and to basic international political arrangements.”[5] It is for these reasons that in 1945, the State Department reported that the oil reserves of the Gulf region constitute “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in history.”[6]

By gaining control of global energy supplies, as opposed to merely preserving access, the US places its hand on the spigot that fuels the economies of a large portion of the industrial capitalist world, granting it “veto power” over the actions of others, in the words of postwar planner George Kennan.[7] Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski has also described the “critical leverage” that US control of global energy resources enables it to exert on its major rivals in the developing tripolar world, Europe and Asia.[8] As Noam Chomsky put it, “one of the ways the US keeps control over Europe and Japan is by having a stranglehold over their energy supply.”[9] Consequently, US policy toward the Middle East, the chief energy-producing region of the world, has been oriented primarily around preserving US control of “this stupendous source of strategic power” since World War II.

Washington exerts its control in each region of the “grand area” by building up client regimes dependent on US patronage. Lord Curzon, the UK Foreign Secretary, described the British-backed Hashemite monarchy in Iraq as an “Arab facade,” which served to “veil” the rule of the true power. The goal was to implement a government which could be “ruled and administered under British guidance,” although “controlled by a native Mohammedan, and, as far as possible, by an Arab staff.”[10] Like Similarly, the Shah of Iran was as a Persian facade, dutifully playing the “dependent client pursuing its regional interests within the overall framework of order managed by the US.” As the Shah himself put it to Nelson Rockefeller in 1976, “I have no objection to America being present; indeed I shall actively defend your interests.”[11] In his memoirs, Henry Kissinger illustrates how grateful Washington was for the Shah's willingness to follow US orders: “whatever the failings of the Shah,” he wrote, “wrestling perhaps with forces beyond any man's control, he was for us the rarest of leaders, an unconditional ally.”[12]

Even as the Shah's Iran seemed to gain unprecedented military superiority in the Gulf region (of course checked by a hegemonic and nuclear-armed Israel), with US military aid skyrocketing, its position as a US-client was not altered. By 1978, near the peak of US military aid to Iran, Iran had acquired 80 sophisticated F-14 Tomcat fighter jets from the United States, providing it with a clear advantage over Russian-made MiG fighters that were used by the Iraqi, Syrian, and Egyptian Air Forces.[13] Documents obtained from the US embassy in Tehran after the 1979 revolution revealed the US assessment that “Iran's... military superiority over Iraq rests primarily on the strength of its Air Force, which has more high-performance aircraft, better pilot training... and ordinance such as laser-guided bombs TV-guided missiles that are unavailable to Iraq.”[14] Despite this, the document reassures, “if US support was withdrawn, the Iranian armed forces probably could not sustain full-scale hostilities for longer than two weeks” due to Iran's utter dependence on US equipment.[15] In accordance with this assessment, once Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, with the full support of the United States and its allies, “the Islamic government in Tehran put more faith in its Air Force” than other elements of its military. As predicted in the embassy document, this served only to reveal the extent of Iran's dependence on the US as “the F-14s were in need of US maintenance, and although the pilots could fly the older F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers, much of the US and British radar system had broken down and the US technicians who serviced it had long ago left Iran.”[16] By 1987, the year before the end of the war, the US believed that Iran had only five F-14s that could actually fly, along with fifteen Phantoms.[17]

Thus the Shah's Iran was the ideal US agent – militarily strong and resource rich, yet utterly dependent on its imperial patron for survival. As for Iran’s oil supplies, having the Shah in power meant having a compliant leader who would ensure that Iranian resources were controlled by western corporations or reliable external elites. Apart from Iran's natural resource wealth, the failed policy which the US had pursued since the Eisenhower years of using the Saudi role as “guardian of the two holy mosques” to promote King Saud to regional hegemony as an “Islamic Pope” was a miserable failure, meaning that “stability” would need to be pursued through other means.[18]

His total lack of charisma aside, Saud's would-be thunder was stolen by the outspoken independent nationalist Gamal Abdul Nasser, who was viewed by Washington as a serious threat. He came to power in 1954, after a coup in 1952 against the British client King Farouk. Under his leadership, Egypt became the center of independent nationalism in the Third World, an ideology which soon caught fire. Before long, Nasser's “pan-Arabism” was “turning the entire world against the House of Saud.”[19] Just as US planners feared, by 1958, Nasser's example of “successful defiance” had “inspired a coup in Iraq” and the spread of his nationalist ideology was threatening the Jordanian monarchy, another Western client.[20] Washington declared war on the ideology, attempting to overthrow the Nasserite Syrian government in 1958, and supporting reactionary monarchical elements throughout the region who shared tie goal of wiping out the new nationalist trend, including backing Saudi Arabia in a long proxy war against Egypt in Yemen. After the Syrian coup attempt failed, Syria and Egypt briefly conjoined to become the United Arab Republic, nominally lead by Nasser, before separating again in 1962.[21] The “virus” of independence and self-determination was spreading, as US planners put it, and in the most crucial region in the world. Something had to be done, and quick.

In 1958, a National Security Council memorandum determined that the “logical corollary” to opposition to “radical Arab Nationalism” was “support for Israel as the only strong pro-Western force in the region.” This support paid off. In 1967, Israel did the US, and its allies a huge favor, destroying Nasser’s regime in its attack on Egypt. It also provided a lesson in global management to the US: the most effective way to deal with problems in the third world is with fierce violence. As Washington observed, the unprovoked attack was wildly successful, crippling Nasser's government beyond repair, and forcing him to become dependent on the USSR.[22] More importantly, the attack brought about the end of secular nationalism as a viable ideology in the Middle East for all intents and purposes. In the post-Nasser Middle East (after 1967), Iran and Saudi Arabia would serve as “twin pillars” upon which “stability” would rest (under the watchful eye of Israel), projecting US power throughout the vital energy-producing region.[23] During the 1970s, both countries were encouraged to purchase large quantities of the most advanced arms, financed significantly using skyrocketing oil revenues after the oil embargo in the wake of the 1973 war.[24]

That Iran, according to Amnesty International in 1976, had the “highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts, and a history of torture which is beyond belief” did not bother Washington, nor did its conclusion that “no country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.”[25] The US leant the crimes of the Shah its full support, providing massive amounts of military aid and training programs to assist in the often brutal suppression of dissent. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, the agency provided direct training in methods of torture to SAVAK, the fearsome Iranian intelligence agency created under the tutelage on the US and Israel.[26] Senator Hubert Humphrey put it quite accurately, saying:

Do you know what the head of the Iranian Army told one of our people? He said the Army was in good shape, thanks to U.S. Aid – it was now capable of coping with the civilian population. That Army isn't going to fight the Russians. It's planning to fight the Iranian people.[27]

The so-called “human rights policy” of the Carter Administration thus rings as hollow as a Phillip-Morris sponsored anti-smoking campaign. In both cases, the motivations should be clear; both are morally repugnant and hypocritical in the extreme.

Willingness to suppress dissent and ensure “stability” was just fine with US leaders, who had already seen the popular, democratic alternative to the Shah when the wildly popular Mohammed Mossadeq became the Prime Minister of Iran in 1951.[28] Not only did he nationalize Iran's oil resources, depriving the British of control, but perhaps more importantly he was an “intolerable symbol of anti-British sentiment in the world,” a hero around whom others may rally in their demands for self-determination, freedom, and justice, each among the most dangerous threats to any system of global domination.[29] He represented “not just one small nation [Iran] against one big company [Anglo-Iranian Oil Company], but that of the wretched of the earth against the rich and powerful,” and was quickly becoming “the preeminent spokesman for the nationalist passion that was surging through the colonial world.”[30] While the US and the British disagreed on many aspects of policy after the second World War, as the US began asserting its dominance and replacing the British presence, opposition to indigenous nationalism was one area in which there was total collusion. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup against the democratically-elected Mossadeq and reinstated the tyrannical Shah Reza Pahlavi, restoring order and decency while gaining a significant share of Iran’s newly re-privatized oil.[31]

The coup illustrates rather clearly that postwar US planners understood that the “most serious challenge” to US efforts to control Middle Eastern oil “on the West's terms” comes from the generally poor, insignificant masses who happen to live on top of it.[32] Those who refuse to accept their designated place as ants in the world economy, advocating instead an independent course, must be crushed using “economic, ideological, or military warfare, or by terror and subversion.”[33] The US cannot tolerate such disobedience or “the rot might spread and spoil the barrel,” in the words chosen by planners, a threat to “stability” - that is, US control.[34] Thus, as internal government documents explain, the overthrow of US-backed dictator Juan Batista by Fidel Castro was unacceptable because, like the rise of Mossadeq, it “represents a successful defiance of the United States” which may provide an example for others.[35] In the words of former Undersecretary of State Robert Olds, the world “has always understood that governments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those which we do not recognize and support fall.”[36] While Olds was referring to Augusto Sandino's fierce campaign of resistance against the US occupation of Nicaragua in 1927, Iran likewise represents a “test case” of this principle.[37] It is absolutely crucial that the empire, be it British or American, “hold the line against Third World nationalism.”[38] This imperative can explain US intervention all over the planet, from Europe to Asia to the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

In 1979, Iranians committed the same grave crime the Cubans had, overthrowing the Shah's “dependent client regime” and replacing it with a leadership that insisted its policy need not coincide exactly with the “order” envisioned by the US. Upon realizing that the new regime had no intention of filling the Shah's role, the US instituted sanctions on the pretext that the US embassy staff had been taken hostage in Tehran. Unfortunately, the timing of the hostage crisis leads many scholars to mistakenly identify it as the reason for the hostility of the US toward Iran, rather than the revolution itself. As Ali Ansari writes, “ever since the hostage crisis in 1979, diplomatic relations had been severed, and... the United States had imposed a series of embargoes on the Islamic Republic.”[39] Similarly, at the critical extreme of the permitted spectrum of opinion, Trita Parsi concludes that “to this day, Iran is wrestling with the disastrous consequences it brought on itself as a result of the hostage-taking.”[40] This erroneous notion arises partly out of the need to portray aggressive US policies as defensive acts against an ominous and implacable foe. This, too, is predictable.

The US, and other aggressive, militaristic states, routinely portray their actions as being guided by noble and selfless objectives, for the benefit of all humanity. For example, John Stewart Mill, in his classic essay on humanitarian intervention, wrote that England was “unique among nations,” because only it acted out of total selflessness, on a mission to civilize and modernize the “barbarian” hordes.[41] Similarly, after it became obvious that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, canceling the self-defense pretext for the invasion, President Bush unveiled his “freedom agenda” in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy on November 6, 2003, declaring that our mission was, and had been all along, to bring democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people. Given the significant amount of evidence contradicting this claim, one would expect that the pretext would be easily refuted and discarded by a free, critical press. Unfortunately, this was not the case; rather it was instantly assumed to be true, fitting in as it does with the overall benevolent intentions that are generally assumed to characterize US policy.[42] Hence liberal commentators concluded that the United States was acting on its “impassioned desire to transform Iraq into a model democracy in the Middle East,” leaving the basic assumption – the doctrine of good intentions – unexamined.[43]

There is much else that leads us to discard the hostage crisis explanation as well. For one, it happened nearly 30 years ago, leading one to wonder how it could still affect US policy today. While much of the mainstream scholarship seems to attribute its continuing effect to some vague, lasting psychological impacts of the crisis and even to the Iran-Contra scandal, even a moment's consideration should reveal these assertions to be utter nonsense. As Ansari writes, “there is little doubt that the experience of the Hostage Crisis and the subsequent Iran-Contra affair placed Iran in a category all of its own as far as US policymakers were concerned.”[44] That this “emotive element” was driving US policy toward Iran, while “denied by the bureaucratic rationalists within successive US administrations,” was “increasingly apparent to outside observers who were struck by the depth of the animosity,” a posture which “transcended party politics,” Ansari observes.[45] While it is no doubt true that the animosity has been intense, and has come from both parties, there are other, more rational reasons why it would be present. Strategic foreign policy decisions rarely have much to do with partisan politics, and lasting psychological impacts could hardly play a role in formulating foreign policy in the most important region in the world. Furthermore, the Iran-Contra scandal was the fault and responsibility of officials in the Reagan administration, not Iran. That the criminal behavior of American policymakers can be used to explain the hostile US attitude toward Iran is plainly absurd.

We can also easily observe how the behavior of the US towards Iran after the 1979 revolution fits into a recurring pattern of similar action worldwide. After all, there was no hostage crisis in 1953, when the US and UK both instituted harsh sanctions on Iran and overthrew its democratically elected government. There was no hostage crisis in Cuba when Fidel Castro took over in 1953, overthrowing a US-backed dictatorship, yet the US has maintained an illegal embargo against that country for decades. There was no hostage crisis in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, or Honduras, yet each of those countries is struggling to recover from a decade of brutal terror inflicted by the US and its proxies. Examples abound; the threat in each case is the same: independent nationalists who refuse to accept that “what we say goes,” as George Bush said in 1991.[46]

1979 was a particularly worrying year for the US and its remaining Gulf client for other reasons as well. The Iranian Revolution coincided with the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, leading soon-to-be King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and his American backers to increasingly see religion as the solution to new regional challenges. The fact that the new regime had declared itself an “Islamic Republic,” articulating an alternative to the Saudi model, made Iran a particularly serious problem. The basis for the regional leadership of the Saudis was their piety, and thus the Iranian Revolution represented a direct challenge to the Saudi monarchy. The need to counter the Islamic Revolution in Iran lead the US and thus the Saudis to support the promotion of the reactionary Wahhabi strand of Islam all around the world.[47] These efforts involved embarking on “a massive campaign to increase the penetration of Saudi-style Sunni Islam overseas,” expressly designed to “roll back the Shia tide while simultaneously bolstering [the Saudis'] Islamic credentials at home and abroad,” amounting to “industrial-scale” exportation of Wahhabi ideology.[48] This policy is responsible for the emergence of the Taliban in Pakistan (later moving to Afghanistan), what is commonly referred to as “al-Qaeda,” and many other radical Jihadi movements throughout the region and eventually around the world.[49] In an attempt to shore up its religious legitimacy and deflect attention away from its weakness, the Saudi government relentlessly promoted the Afghan jihad, shipping many would-be Saudi revolutionaries to fight, and die, fighting the Soviet army.

With the fall of one of its “twin pillars,” US support lurched behind Iraq and Saddam Hussein, the traditional Iranian enemy in the region, encouraging him to invade Iran. If Iran would no longer submit to US imperial rule, faithfully serving as a “facade,” then it would be destroyed. Saddam thus “became our bastion – and the Arab world's bastion – against Islamic 'extremism.' Even after the Israelis bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, our support for Saddam did not waiver.”[50] In response to Saddam's “clear intention to drive his country to war with Iran,” the US and its allies refused to convene the UN Security Council until after Saddam had already invaded. When it finally met, it passed Resolution 479, which did not even call for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Iranian territory.[51] Meanwhile, the “United States had been furnishing Iraq with satellite imagery of the Iranian battle lines since the first days of the war, and a steady stream of unofficial US 'advisors' had been visiting Iraq ever since.”[52] US allies Kuwait and Saudi Arabia also “bankrolled Saddam's new armoury.”[53] As former NSC director of Political-Military Affairs Howard Teicher said in a 1995 affidavit:

[T]he United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required. The United States also provided strategic operational advice to the Iraqis to better use their assets in combat... The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq. My notes, memoranda and other documents in my NSC files show or tend to show that the CIA knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, munitions and vehicles to Iraq.[54]

In 1982, the United States removed Iraq from the list of states that support terrorism, allowing it to increase support to Saddam in the face of Iranian military successes, including providing the Iraqi military with large quantities of chemical and biological weapons.[55] In signing a new National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) to this effect in June, 1982, President Ronald Reagan decided that the United States “could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran,” and “would do whatever was necessary to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran.”[56] A report of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs discovered that the U.S. sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992.[57] Simultaneously, the US “continued to supply Iraq with battlefield intelligence so that they could prepare themselves for the mass Iranian attacks and defend themselves – as the US government knew – with poison gas.”[58] Colonel Walter Lang, the senior defense intelligence officer at the time, told the New York Times that Iraq's massive use of weapons of mass destruction “was not a matter of deep strategic concern.”[59]

These weapons were also used against Iranian civilian population centers, with horrific consequences, including tens of thousands of casualties.[60] Despite the fact that Reagan had received reports that Saddam had used the US-provided chemical weapons against civilians, the US continued to support Iraq with WMDs and massive amounts of conventional weaponry.[61] In fact, while barely reported in the press, the US moved to block even mild criticism of the barbaric assaults.[62] On March 21, 1986, the US was the only member of the United Nations Security Council to vote against the issuance of a statement that

members are profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops and the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons.[63]

In 1984, Ronald Reagan added Iran, the ongoing victim of horrific Iraqi WMD attacks, to the list of state sponsors of terror, two years after it had removed Iraq. The US subsequently set out to block Iran's access to international finance, all the while continuing to extend massive credit to Iraq and supplying its army. Furthermore, the US “forbid international organizations such as the UN from providing U.S.-derived funds to Iran,” which had also “been barred from direct loans, credits, insurance and export-import bank guarantees, and indirect assistance from U.S. contributions to multilateral development banks.”[64] Despite this, it was four more years before the Iranians were finally persuaded to surrender after the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing all 290 passengers. The US government insisted that the Vincennes believed the airliner to be an Iranian F-14, and that the Vincennes was operating in international waters.[65] The latter ended up being untrue, as US Admiral William J. Crowe admitted on Nightline in 1992 that the Vincennes was, after all, in Iranian waters.[66] The Iranians have maintained that the passenger jet was increasing altitude, and turning away at the time of the attack. There is some evidence that the shooting down of the airliner convinced the Iranians to withdraw from the conflict, with the prospect of direct US involvement particularly daunting after nearly a decade of US-backed Iraqi terror. As one Iranian scholar put it at a recent conference sponsored by the Wilson Center,

a turning point in Iran's thinking came with the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in July 1988 by the American cruiser USS Vincennes. That incident apparently led Ayatollah Khomeini to conclude that Iran could not risk the possibility of U.S. open combat operations against Iran and he decided it was time to end the conflict.[67]

The regime, under sanctions which prevented it from acquiring spare parts for its large supply of US-made weaponry and blocked access to international credit, was desperate, and probably would have agreed to any demands the US and Israel made upon it – except becoming a reliable vassal that would unwaveringly protect US interests, as the Shah had, the only concession in which the US was truly interested.[68] The Iran-Contra scandal obviously indicates that the US supplied some weaponry to Iran as well, in order to obtain the funds to fulfill its policy objectives elsewhere. However, this was momentary and fleeting. The main US policy goal of destroying Iran could most easily be accomplished if the war were as destructive as possible. Apart from the sales of WMDs to Iraq, extending the duration of the war was another way to do so. In keeping with this view, during some periods of the conflict, Israel supplied Iran with some spare parts for its US weapons (before 1984).[69] Furthermore, while the US wanted Iran to lose, it did not want Iraq to win, which might extend Saddam's control over enough regional oil supplies that he would be able to challenge the dominance of the US-backed Saudi regime. The House of Saud had long proven a reliable ally; while the US-Saddam connection was quite close (the CIA began funding Saddam in 1959) US control over Saudi Arabia, the key to its global dominance, had been battle tested since 1933.[70] “Stability” would thus be threatened by a dominant Iraq in the Gulf.

It is for this reason that the US could not allow Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to stand, and why the US was subsequently forced to adopt a stance of “dual containment” of both Iran and Iraq, relying solely on Israel to maintain US control over the region.[71] Now that Iran's military and civilian infrastructure was thoroughly destroyed, the Clinton administration strengthened the sanctions against it, preventing Iran from rebuilding its war-torn economy.[72] US representatives in the IMF, World Bank, Asian Development bank, and other IFIs continued to vote down any financial assistance to Iran, making recovery from Saddam's ruthless assaults on Iranian cities and civilian infrastructure next to impossible.[73] For instance, Iran's refineries for making oil into gasoline were largely destroyed by Iraq during the war, leaving them heavily dependent on gasoline imports; Iran is still trying to raise the money to develop a significant domestic refining capacity. As the US Energy Information Administration recently reported, “Iranian refineries are unable to keep pace with domestic demand, and face major infrastructure problems.”[74]

In an attempt to attract much-needed investment given the shortage of domestic capital to finance capital-intensive expansion in its oil and gas sectors, Iran opened these sectors to foreign investment in 1990.[75] But since Iran's Constitution prevents foreign ownership of natural resources, the government has had to issue “buyback contracts,” whereby the state is obligated to buy assets in these sectors held by foreign companies back from them after a certain period of time, at a fixed rate of return. The investor does not receive equity. Rather, the Iranian government assumes all the risk, and is obligated to fully compensate the oil companies for their investments as well as any other expense they incur.[76] The government of Iran has argued that since the oil fields are guaranteed, the buyback contracts are essentially risk-free bonds. Yet with the bond rate in the high single digits, Iran was unable to interest international oil companies by offering a ten percent return. The reasons why international investors would not rush to invest in Iran are not hard to imagine. Probably with a more realistic view of the risks involved, international oil companies have insisted on closer to a twenty percent return, double what the Iranian government offered.[77] Realizing that Iran could not afford to pay such high rates, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) began advocating for Iran to develop these fields on its own, plans that would be put on hold in 1993 with the onset of the Iranian financial crisis.

The US-enforced cutoff of Iran from the IFIs was interrupted in 1991, when Iran received a $250 million loan from the World Bank to help in disaster relief efforts after a massive earthquake that killed 35,000 people.[78] The US was the only country who voted against the loan, although some have speculated that it was delivered in exchange for Iranian help freeing American hostages in Lebanon.[79] Between 1991 and 1993, Tehran received five more loans from the Bank, totaling $600 billion, borrowing heavily to pay off its debt, and was starting to fall behind on payments.[80] By the end of 1993, with more than $30 billion in total foreign debt, Iran announced that it could not afford to pay off its short-term debt, and needed to reschedule its balance in view of its long-term loans.[81] In response, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher denounced Iran as an “international outlaw,” blocking any further loans from the Bank and urging its allies to deny Iran access to the multilateral Paris Club to reschedule its debt, which forced Iran to accept significantly worse rates through bilateral agreements.[82] If loans were made by the World Bank against the opposition of the United States, then “the foreign aid appropriations cut the Administration’s request for the U.S. contribution to the World Bank by the amount of those loans,” a move that “would have significantly reduced U.S. payments to the Bank if it had provided new loans to Iran.”[83] Japan also subsequently agreed to put on hold an agreed $400 million contribution to help build a hydroelectric plant under strong US pressure.[84] However, to the frustration of the Clinton administration, the EU decided that it would stick to the so-called “critical dialogue” policy it had adopted in 1992, criticizing the Islamic Republic while maintaining diplomatic and trade relations.[85]

The Clinton administration decided to seize the opportunity presented by the Iranian financial crisis, and imposed comprehensive sanctions on May 6, 1995 with Executive Order 12959.[86] The new measures banned “U.S. trade and investment in Iran, including the trading of Iranian oil overseas by US companies,” a loophole which the oil companies had exploited in the previous sanctions to purchase Iranian oil without importing it into the United States.[87] Again, the hope was that US allies in Europe and Japan would support the policy, yet they did not, leaving the US sanctions entirely unilateral.[88] Since oil is a fungible commodity, and therefore highly elastic, the non-participation of Europe and Japan in an oil embargo has made that measure purely symbolic. Just as US oil companies have found other sellers, the Iranians have found other buyers.[89] However the new, comprehensive embargo also tightened the financial sanctions, redoubling the profoundly damaging US efforts to prevent Iran from gaining access to international credit, and forcing it to find alternative financing from commercial banks.[90]

Chafing under the weight of the sanctions and the financial crisis, and still unable to attract investors for its “buyback” scheme, the NIOC realized the only option was to offer better rates, in the range of fifteen to eighteen percent, very near to that which the oil companies had asked for.[91] In November 1995, Iran held an international oil and gas conference, which was attended by 40 international oil, gas, and engineering firms, although it ended up being a “complete bust” without a single contract being awarded; “even Lukoil, a Russian firm, backed out in reaction to US pressure.”[92] A few months later, on August 5, 1996, President Clinton signed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) into law, which included provisions allowing the US government to punish foreign persons and firms who exported petroleum products, natural gas, or related technology to Iran.[93] This move met with hostility from the America's European allies, who raised “concerns that the use of the act to impose sanctions would constitute extraterritorial application of U.S. Law.”[94] In May 1998, “under pressure from the EU, Canada, Russia and other states” the Clinton administration exempted a group headed by the French company Total from the ILSA measures, allowing it to take a $600 million oil development project that had been promised to the US firm Conoco prior to the embargoes.[95] Had the US imposed the extraterritorial sanctions, the EU threatened to take the matter to the WTO for resolution, a proposition which “played a role in convincing the U.S. government to waive sanctions.”[96] Japan also agreed to develop Iran's largest oil field, Azadegan, despite strong US opposition.[97] As a result of this shutoff, Iran's foreign exchange shifted to Euros, rather than dollars, allowing the Iranian banking system to continue functioning without much disruption.[98]

Iran held yet another oil and gas conference in 1998, at which it “sweetened BBC [Buy Back Contract] terms” in order to “lure IOCs [International Oil Companies] to invest in Iran despite political risks.”[99] Under new BBC terms, Iran may have been offering IOCs the chance to stay on as service providers for the full life cycle of oil fields, essentially negating the buyback element of the contract. Partially as a result of these better terms, the conference did much better than the previous two, attended by 150 companies, including US firms.[100] However, significant investment in Iran's oil and gas sector has yet to materialize. In more recent renditions of the scheme, Iran has offered even more incentives, including shares in the fields output for as long as it is producing. Furthermore, the length of the contracts has been significantly extended, from five or six years to fifteen years or more. Not surprisingly, even with these significant changes many investors were uncomfortable investing in Iran due to the political risks of the sanctions. As one executive said, “we recognise that there has been some modification but it is not enough to significantly reduce the risks. It's not substantial.”[101] The Bush Administration continued “putting the full-court press on foreign companies,” “going all out” to inflate the perception of such political risks by meeting with oil company executives regularly since early 2007 and “warning them against investing in Iran.”[102]

In 1998, the low price of oil combined with the strengthened financial sanctions created more debt problems for Iran. In order to save foreign exchange to meet its debt-service obligations, Iran was forced to squeeze its imports and cut its desperately needed investments in development programs.[103] In February 1999, Iran had to convert $2 billion of its foreign debt to loans in order to prevent default. Meanwhile, the US worked tirelessly to block Iranian access to the credit that could have helped them out of the crisis. Importantly, the success the US enjoyed in disrupting loans from the World Bank and others damaged Iran's credit, which was a particularly painful blow at a time when Iran was in the grip of a financial crisis. The loss of investor confidence in Iran due to the political risks resulting from the sanctions, US threats, and the cutoff from international credit is incalculable.

On April 28, 1999, following the election of the reformist Mohammed Khatami, the US removed sanctions on food and medicine, with the explanation that “food and medicine generally do not contribute to a nation's military capabilities and/or its support for terrorism.”[104] While unilateral US sanctions on food and medicine are unlikely to seriously affect Iran, as both are available elsewhere, the US' blocking of Iranian access to international credit had been preventing Iran from rebuilding its war-ravaged economy for thirteen years, and was worsening an already serious financial crisis. Yet rather than lifting or relaxing the ever-tightening financial sanctions, Clinton opted for another token gesture when Khatami's reformist party gained substantially in the Iranian majilis in February 2000, easing import restrictions on some non-oil goods such as carpets, dried fruits, and pistachios. Indeed, “these gestures had little impact on Iran's economy but were meant to symbolize US openness to a rapprochement.”[105] As an added show of support, the World Bank, “overriding opposition from the United States,” approved its first loans in Iran in seven years to “upgrade and expand Tehran's sewage system and upgrade the country's primary-health and nutrition facilities.”[106] After the meeting, in “a rare statement,” World Bank President James Wolfensohn said “the consideration of economic and human needs underpins the approval of these loans, as well as the expressed support of the board for the reform agenda of the government of President (Mohamed) Khatami.”[107] Soon after, US allies staged a mutiny and voted to approve a $200 million World Bank loan that the US had been blocking for months.[108]

In August 2001, despite hinting in his campaign that he might lift the sanctions on Iran, new President George Bush signed a bill which would continue the ILSA for another five years.[109] The tragic events of September 11, 2001 proved to be a handy tool for escalating US violence and unilateralism around the world, and as a result US-Iran relations deteriorated rapidly from that point. In January 2002, President Bush officially ended the Clinton-Khatami rapprochement, labeling Iran as part of an imagined “Axis of Evil” in his State of the Union speech, indicating that US efforts to suffocate the country were not going to end anytime soon, and hinting at a possible US assault in the wake of the unilateral attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. There are currently 2 US aircraft carrier battle groups stationed in the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's shores, and US fighter jets routinely conduct “exercises,” screaming over the crowded waterways at low altitudes. Standing on the deck of one of these aircraft carriers, in front of several F-18 Hornets, eleven miles off the Iranian coast in May 2007, Dick Cheney said “with two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike .... we'll continue... delivering justice to the enemies of freedom. And we’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”[110] In September 2006, President Bush again renewed the ILSA.[111]

The success of these financial sanctions has lead the Bush administration to increase their use in recent years. As Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt stated during a May 2007 speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the roles of the Treasury Department and other finance ministries “have evolved…and the world of finance now plays a critical role in combating international security threats.”[112] In June 2005, George Bush issued Executive Order 13382, under which “all property and interests in property” of entities targeted for sanctions that are held by the United States are “blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt.” This applies not just to entities specifically targeted for sanctions, but also any that “attempted to provide, financial, material, technological or other support” for sanctioned entities.[113] This broad power, administered through executive order rather than passed by Congress, will significantly increase the risk of doing business with Iranian firms, and will surely continue to damage Iran's economy by continuing to deter financial institutions from dealing with Iran. These financial sanctions have been fortified and given a more multilateral character since December 2006, when the UN Security Council has adopted a series of resolutions targeting many Iranian individuals and firms, including Bank Sepah, Iran's fifth-largest bank. As a result of this increasing pressure, “many foreign firms now seem hesitant to finalize investment deals with Iran,” indicating the growing multilateral legitimacy of the sanctions.[114] These sanctions, of course, were adopted “in response” to Iranian unwillingness to unconditionally surrender its legal right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Despite the fact that all the available evidence, including that presented by US intelligence agencies, indicates that Iran’s nuclear program is not for military purposes, the UN Security Council still demanded that it surrender the right to enrichment without negotiation. When Iran refused, the UNSC applied the multilateral sanctions.

The primary cumulative effect of the financial sanctions has been to deprive Iran's capital-intensive oil development projects of the necessary investment capital. Much of Iran's oil infrastructure was heavily damaged in the Iraq-Iran war, and most of its onshore facilities are old and in need of repair or replacement. The shortage of domestic capital brought on by the financial sanctions has meant that Iran cannot upgrade and replace existing infrastructure, nor can it develop new oil and gas fields as would be necessary for it to expand its production. Even though Iran has signed several large oil development deals in recent years, indicating that it has found replacements for US oil companies, Iran would almost certainly have received better terms if there were competition from US firms. The sanctions have created a generally poor investment climate in Iran, while also preventing Iran from being able to finance these important projects itself.

Instead, Iran has been forced to sign bad oil contracts and borrow money at a significantly higher cost than it would have to in a sanction-free environment. In 1999, Moody's Investment Services issued a sovereign rating of B2 for Iran, but was forced to remove the credit rating under pressure from the United States “on the grounds that performing the credit ratings service might violate the U.S. trade ban,” according to a government report.[115] Likewise, Standard & Poor's has no rating for Iran “because the sanctions bar U.S. investors from holding Iranian bonds.”[116] Fitch, a French conglomerate, rated Iran five notches below investment grade due to the substantial political risks involved, before it too pulled its ratings.[117] Despite these problems, Iran was able to release its first bond since the Islamic Revolution on July 10, 2002, denominated in euros. Iran later followed up on the success of this first experience by releasing a second, smaller bond in December 2002, and has since suggested that it may issue a third bond valued around one billion dollars. However, given the state of global finance, and the mediocre performance of Iranian bonds, a Fitch analyst told Reuters that “we think any future bond issuance is highly unlikely.”[118]

We can easily observe how the unilateral US sanctions on Iran strained US-European and US-Asian trade relations, escalating conflict and dramatically illustrating the emergence of a tripolar world order, which US planners have been trying to prevent since the close of the second World War. The increasing ability for Europe and Asia to defy the wishes of the US and pursue independent policies is partially a product of Europe's increasing reliance on Russia for its energy resources. Europe's increasing dependence on Russia was exhibited recently by its unwillingness to sanction or apply significant pressure on Russia after its invasion of Georgia, ignoring (outrageously hypocritical) US demands.[119] Meanwhile, Asia has formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, for which Washington applied for observer status, but was denied.[120] Conversely, Iran's application for observer status was granted, and it may be on the way to full membership. The SCO has positioned itself as a counterweight to NATO, and has requested for US troops to leave the territory of its member-states.[121] The growing independence of Europe and Asia, and India and China's breakneck growth and skyrocketing demand for dwindling energy resources, make preserving control of what is left crucial to maintaining global power.

This reality can certainly help to understand the US invasion of Iraq, establishing permanent bases there from which it can project its power throughout the region as well as taking control of its massive oil resources, as well as to understand the growing importance of Iran to the US. US policy failures in Eastern Europe have pushed that region into the arms of a resurgent Russia, limiting the options of the US to build oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian region that can bypass Russia. One project, the NABUCCO pipeline, is in serious jeopardy since Turkmenistan, a crucial supplier for the pipeline, no longer seems interested.[122] The President of Azerbaijan, another crucial state for the completion of the project, refused to even meet with Vice President Dick Cheney on a recent visit.[123]

Since Russia’s incursion into Georgia, local political experts have wondered about the geopolitical impact on Azerbaijan. The entire US energy strategy in the Caspian Basin is predicated on Azerbaijan’s unwavering commitment to the West. The commitment now looks more fragile than ever, and the Cheney visit may well have done more harm than good, in terms of retaining Azerbaijan’s allegiance to Washington’s energy agenda.[124]

While US hostility toward Iran has barred it from participating in these potentially lucrative pipeline projects, the US may not have many other options to supply Europe with energy independent of Russian control and influence. As Russia demonstrated last summer, it is fully capable of shutting down pipeline operations as close as northern/central Georgia, meaning that to effectively pass Russia and its proxies any pipeline route would have to run further south. There has also been talk of an initiative, lead by Russia, to form a global gas producers cartel, which would significantly strengthen Russia's hand in the realm of geopolitics, and makes more imperative the building of a gas pipeline that can bypass Russia.[125] All of these factors combine to make Iran very important to the future of the United States, both in terms of who is able to control its large energy supplies and its crucial strategic location. It could very well be that the new US administrations sees more to gain from ironing out a deal of some kind than from continuing its foolish attempts to destroy a regime that have failed for 30 years.

As I have tried to show, the US is faced with nothing less than the marked decline of its global empire. For the US to alter its hostile posture toward Iran, possibly removing the sanctions, would mean a complete reversal of its policy of attack, threat, and strangulation that has been ongoing since Iran's Islamic government took power in 1979. It would be an admission that Iran has successfully defied US policy and lived to tell the tale. It would be an acknowledgement by the US that what we say doesn't necessarily go; that we cannot achieve vital policy goals without Iranian cooperation. No longer can the US run the Middle East and, partially in consequence, the world on its own. Rather, it has not alternative but to discuss and negotiate with others who do not do as they are told for the first time in its modern history. Despite the best efforts of US planners, the world is learning every day that the mighty United States empire is not invincible.

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[1] Shoup, Lawrence and William Minter, “Imperial Brain Trust.” Monthly Review, 1977, 130. Shoup and Minter's study of the War and Peace Studies project of the Council on Foreign Relations and State Department from 1939 to 1945.

[2] Citino, Nathan. From Arab Nationalism to OPEC. Indiana University Press, 2002

[3] Chomsky, Noam. Necessary Illusions. South End Press, 1989

[4] Chomsky, Noam. Necessary Illusions. South End Press; 1989

[5] Bronson, Rachel. Thicker Than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership With Saudi Arabia. Oxford University Press, 2006. pp. 39 - 40

[6] US Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States. 1945, viii, 45.

[7] Quoted in Schaller, Michael. Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation. Oxford University Press. Excerpt obtained from http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/schaller-states.html. According to Schaller, Kennan believed that “a prosperous yet dependent ally would best serve American interests. This required imposing controls 'foolproof enough and cleverly enough exercised ... to have power over what Japan imports in the way of oil and other things.' Economic controls would give Washington 'veto power over what she does.'”

[8] Brezinski, Zbignew. “Hegemonic Quicksand,” The National Interest Winter 2003-04. www.kas.de/upload/dokumente/brzezinski.pdf. In Brezinski's words: “America's security role in the region gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region.”

[9] Chomsky, Noam “Oil Imperialism and the US-Israel Relationship.” Leviathan, 1:1-3, Spring, 1977, pp. 6-9, 86 [March 1977]

[10] The Research Unit for Political Economy, Monthly Review 55, no. 1 (May 2003).

[11] Parsi, Trita. Treacherous Alliance. 2007: Yale University Press. pg. 61

[12] Kissinger, The White House Years. pg. 1261

[13] Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. New York: Vintage Books, 2005, pg. 176; Cooper, Tom. “Iraqi Air Force Since 1948 Part 1.” Air Combat Information Group, 2003. See http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_207.shtml; Cooper, Tom. “Iraqi Air Force Since 1948 Part 2.” Air Combat Information Group, 2003. See http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_208.shtml; “Syrian Arab Air Force,” GlobalSecurity.org. See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/syria/airforce.htm; Cooper, Tom. “Western and Northern Africa Database: Libya and Egypt 1971- 1979.” Air Combat Information Group, 2003. See http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_353.shtml

[14] Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. New York: Vintage Books, 2005, pg. 176, quoting documents obtained from the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid. pg. 177

[17] Ibid.

[18] Burke, 56

[19] Bronson, 71

[20] Bronson 72

[21] Vitalis, Ibid. pp. 191 – 192; Bronson, 70

[22] I am, of course, aware of the way the story of 1967 is usually told. Unfortunately, the standard version bares little resemblance to the facts. See Finkelstein, Norman G. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. (New York: Verso Books) 2003 for a more accurate telling.

[23] Hooglund, Eric. "The Persian Gulf." In Intervention into the 1990s: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Third World, edited by Peter Schraeder. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Cited in Blum, William. Killing Hope. 2004. ME : Common Courage Press. Pg 72. Martin Ennals, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, cited in an article by Reza Baraheni in Matchbox (Amnesty publication in New York) Fall, 1976.

[26] Hersch, Seymour. “Ex-Analyst Says C.I.A. Rejected Warning on Shah; Shah Was a Source for C.I.A.” New York Times, January 7, 1979. Jesse J. Leaf, Chief CIA analyst on Iran for five years before resigning in 1973, interviewed by Seymour Hersch. The interview is available at http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70917FC3E5511728DDDAE0894D9405B898BF1D3&scp=2&sq=Jesse+Leaf&st=p

[27] Cook, Fred J. “The CIA.” The Nation. June 24, 1961. Available at http://www.thenation.com/archive/detail/13276874

[28] Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. New Jersey: Wiley, 2008.

[29] Ibid. pg. 132.

[30] Ibid. pg. 118.

[31] Ibid. See in particular chapters 11 – 12.

[32] Citino, Nathan. From Arab Nationalism to OPEC. Indiana University Press, 2002. pg 5

[33] Chomsky, Noam. Necessary Illusions. South End Press; 1989. pg 27

[34] Quoted in Gabbard, David, Knowledge and Power in the Global Economy. 2000. pg. 8

[35] Gleijeses, Pietro. Conflicting Missions, p. 26, citing State Department Planning Council, February 1964.

[36] Quoted in Kornbluh, Peter. Nicaragua. Institute for Policy Studies; 1987. pg. 1

[37] Ibid.

[38] Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. New Jersey: Wiley, 2008. pg. 131.

[39] Ansari, Ali. “Iran and the United States in the Shadow of 9/11,” in Iran in the 21^st Century, eds. Homa Katouzian and Hossein Shahidi. New York : Routledge, 2008. pg 108.

[40] Parsi, Trita. Treacherous Alliance. 2007: Yale University Press. pg 90.

[41] John Stewart Mill, “A Few Words on Non-Intervention.”

[42] For a thorough discussion of the motives behind the Iraq war and their presentation in mainstream scholarship and media reports, see my “Embedding Imperialism” available at http://rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/10/embedding-imperialism-iraqi.html.

[43] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. Imperial life in the emerald city: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. Alfred A. Knopf, New York : 2006, pg. 179. For a more thorough discussion of the “doctrine of good intentions” and its role in distorting perceptions of the Iraq war, see my “Aggression and Consequences” available at http://rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/11/aggression-and-consequences.html

[44] Ansari, Ali. “Iran and the United States in the Shadow of 9/11,” in Iran in the 21^st Century, eds. Homa Katouzian and Hossein Shahidi. New York : Routledge, 2008. pg 108.

[45] Ansari, Ali. “Iran and the United States in the Shadow of 9/11,” in Iran in the 21^st Century, eds. Homa Katouzian and Hossein Shahidi. New York : Routledge, 2008. pg 109.

[46] Morrow, Lance et al. “Triumphant Return.” Time. March 18, 1991. Available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972552-3,00.html

[47] Kepel, Gilles. 156

[48] Burke, 60

[49] Burke, 60

[50] Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. New York: Vintage Books, 2005, pg. 171.

[51] Ibid. pg 178

[52] Ibid. pg 207

[53] Ibid.

[54] Statement by former NSC official Howard Teicher to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, January 31, 1995. Available at http://www.overcast.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/print/spidersweb/teicher.htm

[55] Friedman, Alan. Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq, Bantam Books, 1993.

[56] Statement by former NSC official Howard Teicher to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, January 31, 1995. Available at http://www.overcast.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/print/spidersweb/teicher.htm

[57] Mackay, Neil and Felicity Arbuthnot. “How Did Iraq Get It's Weapons? We Sold Them.” Sunday Herald, September 8, 2002. Available at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.htm

[58] Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. New York: Vintage Books, 2005. pg. 213

[59] Tyler, Patrick. “Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas.” New York Times, August 18, 2002. Available at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D03E0DB133DF93BA2575BC0A9649C8B63&scp=1&sq=Iraq+poison+gas+%22was+not+a+matter+of+deep+strategic+concern%22&st=nyt

[60] See for instance items 6, 7, and 8 of the UN Secretary General's report to the UN Security Council on 9 December 1991, available at http://www.iranian.com/Kasraie/2005/April/Ahwaz/Images/page1.pdf

[61] Galbraith, Peter W.; Van Hollen, Christopher Jr. (21 September 1988), Chemical Weapons Use in Kurdistan: Iraq's Final Offensive, staff report to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, pp. 30

[62] Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. New York: Vintage Books, 2005.

[63] Resolutions and Statements of the United Nations Security Council (1946 – 1989). Karel C. Wellens (ed.) Martinus Nijhoff Publishers : 1990. pg 371.

[64] Perkovich, George and Silvia Manzanero. “Plan B: Using Sanctions to End Iran's Nuclear Program.” Arms Control Today, May 2004.

[65] Martins, Mark S. (Winter 1994), "Rules of Engagement for Land Forces: A Matter of Training, Not Lawyering,” Military Law Review 143: 43–46. Available at http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Military_Law_Review/pdf-files/27687D~1.pdf

[66] Koppel, Ted (1 July 1992), "The USS Vincennes: Public War, Secret War", ABC Nightline. Transcript available at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/ir655-nightline-19920701.html

[67] “The 1980-1988 Iran–Iraq War: A CWIHP Critical Oral History Conference,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 11 August 2004. Available at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=topics.item&news_id=90411.

[68] Parsi, Trita. Treacherous Alliance. 2007: Yale University Press. While he oddly avoids this conclusion, Parsi's discussion of the pleas of the Iranian government for weapons, and subsequent US rejections, leave little doubt that what they were actually interested in.

[69] Parsi, Trita. Treacherous Alliance. 2007: Yale University Press.

[70] Sale, Richard. “Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot,” UPI. 4/10/2003. Sale's sources reveal that the US-Saddam connection date back to 1959, the year after Qasim came to power.

[71] Conry, Barbara. “America's Misguided Policy of Dual Containment in the Persian Gulf.” CATO Institute, November 10, 1994. Available at http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-033.html

[72] O'Sullivan, Meghan. Shrewd Sanctions. Brookings Institution Press, May 2003. pg 62.

[73] Byman, Daniel. Deadly Connections. Cambridge University Press, 2005. pg 109.

[74] Energy Information Association. “Iran Country Analysis Brief,” October 2007. Available at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iran/Oil.html.

[75] “Iran – the Buy-back Approach.” APS Review Gas Market Trends, April 2, 2007. Available at https://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/161354456.html

[76] Petroleum Iran. “Buy Back.” National Iranian Oil Company. December 2008. Available at http://www.petroleumiran.com/buyback.html

[77] “Iran – the Buy-back Approach.” APS Review Gas Market Trends, April 2, 2007. Available at https://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/161354456.html

[78] Mufson, Steven. “World Bank Approves Iran Loan; U.S. Casts Only Vote Against.” The Washington Post. March 16, 1991.

[79] See for instance Lobe, Jim. “World Bank approves loans to Iran, despite US.” Asia Times, May 20, 2000. Available at http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/BE20Ag02.html “In 1991, however, it returned to the bank which approved an initial $250 million loan for emergency earthquake relief. Its return coincided as well with a brief detente with Washington which followed the freeing, apparently with Iranian help, of a number of US hostages held in Lebanon.”

[80] Ibid.

[81] Menashri, David. Post-Revolutionary Politics in Iran. Routledge, 2001. pg 109.

[82] Lobe, Jim. “World Bank approves loans to Iran, despite US.” Asia Times, May 20, 2000. Available at http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/BE20Ag02.html; See also Askari, Hossein, John Forrer, Hildy Teegan, Jiawen Yang. “U.S. Economic Sanctions: Lessons from the Iranian Experience.” Business Economics, July 2001. Available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1094/is_3_36/ai_78177925/pg_8

[83] Katzman, Kenneth. “Iran: Current Developments and U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service. CRS Issue Brief for Congress. July 25, 2003. pg. 14

[84] Ibid. pg. 13

[85] Quille, Gerrard and Rory Keane. “The EU and Iran: Towards a New Political and Security Dialogue” in Europe and Iran: Perspectives on Non-Proliferation. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Research Report No. 21, Sharon Klein (ed). Oxford University Press. pg. 97

[86] Katzman, Kenneth. “Iran: Current Developments and U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service. CRS Issue Brief for Congress. July 25, 2003. pg. 11

[87] Ibid.; See also Hearing Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate, The Iran Foreign Sanctions – S. 1228. October 11, 1995. pg 2.

[88] In 1994, the year before the tighter sanctions, Germany exported four times more to Iran than the US did, Japan exported twice as much, Italy twice as much, and France slightly more than the US.

[89] See “Iran Sanctions: Impact in Furthering U.S. Objectives is Unclear and Should be Reviewed.” Government Accountability Office, December 2007.

[90] Katzman, Kenneth. “Iran: Current Developments and U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service. CRS Issue Brief for Congress. July 25, 2003.

[91] “Iran – the Buy-back Approach.” APS Review Gas Market Trends, April 2, 2007. Available at https://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/161354456.html

[92] Clawson, Patrick. “Can we coexist with Iran?” USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March 1997.

[93] “Iran – the Buy-back Approach.” APS Review Gas Market Trends, April 2, 2007. Available at https://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/161354456.html

[94] “Iran Sanctions: Impact in Furthering U.S. Objectives is Unclear and Should be Reviewed.” Government Accountability Office, December 2007. pg 15

[95] “Iran – the Buy-back Approach.” APS Review Gas Market Trends, April 2, 2007. Available at https://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/161354456.html

[96] “Iran Sanctions: Impact in Furthering U.S. Objectives is Unclear and Should be Reviewed.” Government Accountability Office, December 2007. pg 15

[97] Ibid.

[98] Crail, Peter. “US Wields Financial Sanctions Against Iran.” Arms Control Today, November, 2008. Available at http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_11/Iran_sanctions.

[99] “Iran – the Buy-back Approach.” APS Review Gas Market Trends, April 2, 2007. Available at https://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/161354456.html

[100] Ibid.

[101] Ibid.

[102] Ibid.

[103] “Outlook for 1999 – 2000: An import squeeze will push up prices.” The Economist, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report Iran. November 1998.

[104] “US to Ease Sanctions on Iran, 2 others.” Washington Post, April 29, 1999.

[105] Byman, Daniel. Deadly Connections. Cambridge University Press, 2005. pg 109.

[106] Lobe, Jim. “World Bank approves loans to Iran, despite US.” Asia Times, May 20, 2000. Available at http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/BE20Ag02.html

[107] Ibid.

[108] Katzman, Kenneth. “Iran: Current Developments and U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service. CRS Issue Brief for Congress. July 25, 2003.

[109] See “RFE/RL Iran Report,” January 2001. Available at http://www.fas.org/news/iran/2001/iran-010129.htm

[110] Sanger, David. “On Carrier in Gulf, Cheney Warns Iran.” New York Times. May 11, 2007.

[111] Katzman, Kenneth. “The Iran Sanctions Act,” Congressional Research Service. July 31, 2008.

[112] Quoted in Crail, Peter. “US Wields Financial Sanctions Against Iran.” Arms Control Today, November, 2008. Available at http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_11/Iran_sanctions.

[113] Executive Order 13382 of June 28, 2005, Blocking Property of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators and Their Supporters. Available at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-13382.htm.

[114] Katzman, Kenneth. “The Iran Sanctions Act,” Congressional Research Service. July 31, 2008. pg. 1

[115] Katzman, Kenneth. “Iran: Current Developments and U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service. CRS Issue Brief for Congress. July 25, 2003. pg. 14. See also “Iran Dropped By US Rating Agency,” BBC News. June 3, 2002.

[116] “UPDATE Iran mulls $1 bln international bond.” Forbes, November 19, 2008. Available at http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/11/19/afx5713812.html

[117] Ibid.

[118] Ibid.

[119] “Europe's Retreat,” Wall Street Journal. November 16, 2008. Available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122687156550931677.html

[120] Hiro, Dilip. “Shanghai Surprise,” The Guardian. June 16, 2006. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/16/shanghaisurprise

[121] Tannock, Charles. “Backing Kazakhstan's 'great game,” The Guardian. February 18, 2008

[122] Heimer, John. “Nabucco: The fat lady has sung.” Asia Times, May 16, 2007. Available at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/IE16Ag01.html

[123] “Azerbaijan Plays Waiting Game Following Cheney Blow Up in Baku.” Eurasianet.com, September 9, 2008. Available at http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/rp090908.shtml

[124] Ibid.

[125] “Russia, Qatar eye OPEC-syle gas cartel.” AP. February 12, 2007. Available at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17116262/