The unfolding human catastrophe in Iran

Sanctions imposed on Iran’s banks and financial institutions could lead to a humanitarian crisis

THE UNFOLDING HUMAN CATASTROPHE IN IRAN

Iran still imports a significant amount of wheat, rice and other food products and if the sanctions drag on, the shortage of food could become very significant [EPA] During their debate about foreign policy last Monday, President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney both agreed that the crippling unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran by the the United States and its allies must continue, until the Islamic Republic recalibrates its nuclear ambitions.

Both seem to have also adopted Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s favoured refrain that “Iran must not be allowed to acquire a nuclear capability” and that such a capability constitutes a “red line” not to be crossed at any cost. Previously the inveterate refrain had been “Iran must not be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon”.

The definition of “capability” has continued to remain vague and ill-defined, and a number of analysts have concluded that the Islamic Republic is already nuclear capable and has all the necessary components it would need in order to assemble a bomb if it so desired. Once a country has mastered enrichment technology it is generally accepted that the decision to weaponise largely becomes a political one.

Both Israeli and American intelligence continue to hold that Iran has not yet taken any such a decision. A crucial caveat is of course is that as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with all its enrichment sites subject to IAEA inspections, if it desired to make a dash for the bomb, Iran would have to withdraw from the NPT. An act that would immediately raise alarm bells across the world and most likely provoke a rapid Western military response.

Apart from the vague and shifting red lines which continue to afflict the thick fog of Western national security rhetoric vis-a-vis Iran, not a single word was uttered by either men about the plight and suffering of the Iranian people who have had no role in the decisions made by the Islamic Republic’s leaders. But, the fact is that the sanctions, exacerbated by government incompetence, have the potential to give rise to a major human catastrophe.

‘Smart’ and ‘targeted’

The lack of sensitivity to the plight of ordinary Iranians was – at least on the President’s part – surprising, because when his administration together with the European Union began imposing sanctions on Iran, they promised the world that the sanctions will be “smart” and “targeted”. The world was promised that the sanctions will not hurt millions of ordinary Iranians who go about their daily lives and, in fact, oppose many of their government’s policies.

But, the sanctions are now in full force, and are hurting the same people who we were told were not meant to be their target, in what is yet another case of “collateral damage” inflicted by Western policy towards Iran, and its disenfranchised people who have lost control over their destiny at both home and abroad. In fact, there are very strong indications that a human catastrophe could emerge whose scale poses as much a threat as an outright military attack.

The supposedly “smart” and “targeted” sanctions have been increasingly expanded to all areas, even if they are not part of the official sphere of sanctions. This is intentional, even if Western leaders tell us otherwise. To avoid criticisms of the type that they were confronted with after they imposed all-encompassing sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s, the US and its EU allies have imposed sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank and practically all other Iranian banks that are involved in commercial transactions with the outside world. Since these banks open lines of credit for imports, and provide financial guarantees for commerce with the outside world, it has become very difficult, if not impossible, to import vital goods and products into the country, even those that absolutely have nothing to do with the military, or oil, or the nuclear programme. In effect, this is the type of sanctions imposed on Iraq, but in a supposedly more “humanitarian” way.

An area that has been hit very hard is the pharmaceutical sector. Although Iran produces a large part of the medicines and drugs that its population needs, based on the generic versions of brand-named pharmaceuticals, it is still unable to produce the most advanced drugs that have come to the market over the past 10 to 15 years that deal with a variety of serious illnesses, simply because their generic versions are not yet available. As a result, Iran must still import a significant amount of drugs every year to address the needs of the Iranian people when dealing with such illnesses as leukaemia, AIDS, and others.

Sanctions on banks

But, the sanctions imposed on Iran’s banks and financial institutions have effectively prevented Iran from importing the necessary drugs and the associated chemicals. At the same time, as Iran’s oil exports continue to decrease due to the sanctions strain on the country’s resources, it becomes increasingly difficult to pay for the expensive imported drugs, even if a way can be found for importing them. As a pharmacist in Tehran said, “The warehouses for pharmaceutics are empty because we cannot import what we need due to the sanctions, and even if we could, we do not have the resources to pay for them due to the sanctions.”

As a result, the shortage of drugs has all the makings of a human catastrophe. According to recent estimates as many as 6 million patients are currently being affected by the impact of sanctions on the import and manufacture of medications inside Iran.

This has prompted many of Iran’s healthcare professionals to raise their voices, and begin protesting the impending danger they’re witnessing before their eyes. The board of directors of the Iranian Haemophilia Society recently informed the World Federation of Haemophilia (IFH) that the lives of tens of thousands of children are being endangered by the lack of proper drugs as a consequence of international economic sanctions imposed on Iran.

According to the letter that the Society’s board sent to the IFH, while the export of drugs to Iran has not been banned, the sanctions imposed on the Central Bank of Iran and the country’s other financial institutions have severely disrupted the purchase and transfer of medicines. Describing itself as a non-political organisation that has been active for 45 years, the Society condemned [FA] the “inhumane and immoral” US and EU sanctions and appealed to international organisations for help.

No drugs to treat illnesses

Some statistics are very telling. Tens of thousands of Iranian boys and young men are haemophilic and need certain drugs that must be imported. Many of them may need surgery for a variety of reasons, but in the absence of proper drugs for their haemophilia illness, the surgeries cannot be performed, because the bleeding could not be stopped.

Several credible reports from Iran indicate that surgeries for all haemophilic patients have been cancelled, and at least a few have already died.There are about 37,000 Iranians with MS, a debilitating disease that can be controlled only with advanced medications; otherwise, the patients will die. In fact, three members of one of our extended families in Iran are afflicted with multiple sclerosis. Furthermore, given that even under the best medical conditions 40,000 Iranians lose their lives to cancer every year, and that it has been predicted by many medical experts that Iran will have a “cancer tsunami” by 2015 as every year 70,000 to 80,000 new cases of cancer are identified in Iran, the gravity of the situation becomes even more perilous.

Fatemeh Hashemi, head of Iran’s Charity Foundation for Special Diseases, which cares for the needs of patients with life-threatening diseases, including a variety of cancers in adult patients as well as children, heart diseases, lung problems, multiple sclerosis (MS), and thalassemia, recently wrote a letter to United Nations’ Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The Foundation has been a highly successful nonpolitical organisation that, in addition to Iran, has also served many people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whose work has been recognised by the UN.

In her letter Hashemi said that she leads an organisation “with 6 million patients and, hence, in contact with 30 per cent of Iran’s total population”. Emphasising the non-political nature of her organisation and her letter, Hashemi added:

“Although drugs have not been sanctioned, due to the impossibility of paying for the imported drugs through the banking system, the heavy shadow of the sanctions is felt in the health sector. Not only has importing drugs been disrupted, importing the raw chemicals [for the drugs that Iran does produce] has also been disrupted… As a human activist, I call on humanity’s conscience to pay attention to the fact that, despite the claims by those that have imposed the sanctions, their pressure is having its destructive effect on the life and health of the people.”

 Hence, the supposedly “smart” and “targeted” sanctions that were not going to hurt the ordinary Iranians have been inflicting significant damage on the Iranian people.The net result is that shortage of drugs for patients with serious and life-threatening illnesses is becoming chronic in Iran, and is reaching hazardous levels.Shortage of drugsMeanwhile, recent reports indicate that two large plants that produce drugs for a variety of illnesses have also been closed. The reason is that it has become essentially impossible to import the chemical compounds used in the production of the drugs, due to the sanctions imposed on Iran’s financial institutions that deal with the outside world.The world must recognise that in certain respects the path taken by the United States and its allies is eerily similar to what was done to Iraq in the 1990s. The United Nation’s UNICEF estimated that the sanctions imposed on Iraq caused the death of up to 500,000 Iraqi children. Given that Iran’s population is three times that of Iraq, if the sanctions imposed on Iran last several years – as they did with Iraq – the number of dead resulting from them could be larger than that of Iraq.

Moreover, given that Iran still imports a significant amount of wheat, rice and other food products, if the sanctions drag on, not only could hundreds of thousands of Iranians die due to shortage of drugs and medical goods, the shortage of food could also become very significant. It should also be noted, if only in passing, that sanctions did not change the policy of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Thus, after causing the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, those who had been jockeying for war with Iraq all along argued that the sanctions had failed, and “regime change” was the only alternative. As we now know Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, nor was it trying to produce them. Iran also does not have nuclear weapons yet, but Western policy has the power to change the Iranian leadership’s calculus and make it seem like the only viable option remaining with the power to guarantee regime survival.

In sum, comprehensive sanctions not only killed thousands in Iraq, but they eventually laid the path to war. One key difference in the case of Iran is of course that one of its few lifelines to the outside world is still China, which depends on Iranian energy to abet its ongoing economic expansion, hardly a commendable development for those supporting human rights and entertaining hopes of democratisation in the Islamic Republic.

The sanctions have arguably failed to meaningfully shift the stance of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who most recently emphasised that the Islamic Republic is prepared to negotiate and has in fact never left the negotiating table, but will not be cowed into submission. So, if, for instance, Iran is expected to forgo 19.75 per cent uranium enrichment and close the underground Fordow enrichment facility, two of the P5+1’s key demands at the Baghdad and Moscow talks, there must be some form of quid pro quo. Without one, there is no incentive for Iran to cooperate in an atmosphere already severely afflicted by a longstanding deficit of trust. There have been rumblings and rumours of possible sanctions relief after the US presidential election but nothing tangible as of yet.

There are many voices within Iran that have called on the leadership to find a compromise with the West. The US and its allies can make such voices stronger and louder if they offer to lift some of the sanctions, or at least have exceptions that allow Iran’s financial system to be involved in the import of vital goods and products with no military or nuclear applications, such as drugs and food stuffs.

It may be useless to preach to the Obama administration about the human, moral, and ethical toll of its policy toward Iran, given that the President has in many respects perpetuated the destructive Middle East policy of George W Bush, which in Iran’s case has been even tougher and more damaging to the livelihood of the Iranian people.

But, the emerging catastrophe will be an ethical and moral problem for the West for decades to come, a catastrophe that is being created simply because Western governments appear to blindly pursue crippling sanctions against Iran as an end in themselves, as opposed to a means by which to further the diplomatic process.

Given the tragic history of the US intervention in Iran in the past, it is be prudent to rethink the consequences of such blind sanctions, and their effect on the thinking of the Iranian people about the US – a largely pro-US population in one of the most turbulent areas in the world that has been known for its hostility towards the United States and its perceived negative impact in much of the region.


Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, analyses developments in Iran for the website PBS/Frontline: Tehran Bureau.

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, a former Iran researcher at the Oxford Research Group, is Editor of Al-Monitor’s Iran Pulse. He is also a fourth-year doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford.

This article first appeared on Al Jazeera.com

Empire – Targeting Iran (47 mins)

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Comments (6)

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  1. martinthorpe says:

    What has this got to do with the cause of Scottish independence other than both countries are oil producers? I couldn’t care less what happens in Iran, the place is and has been for a century or more a basket case and no amount of angsty hang wringing by western Lefties is going to alter this fact. Let the Iranians get on with it and lets concentrate on those matters we can influence instead to those we patently can’t. It never ceases to amaze and amuse me the tendency of those on the left to make common cause with people they don’t know in situations they barely understand – Palestine, Cuba, Tibet, etc, etc.,

    Of course one explanation is that finding the domestic working class to problematic in the hero stakes they gaze misty eyed to foreign shores for black/white, hero/villain scenarios. The only thing Iran has to teach us, apart from the obvious: that organised religion and civilisation are utterly incompatible is that oil “wealth” is a dangerous and destabilising influence on development, something that the Norwegians recognised when they insisted that their bonanza be administered in the way that it has. Whether like the Shah you blow it on Chieftain tanks and F-14’s or like Thatcher/Blair/Brown and now Cameron on the dole and running an unsustainable trade deficit the net result is still the same, money down the drain never to be seen again.

  2. bellacaledonia says:

    If you write to all the other newspapers in the country I’m sure they’ll scrap foreign news coverage too on the basis we cant do anything about it so why give Johnny Foreigner a second thought.

  3. Wullie says:

    A parochial and small minded rant from friend Martin here who obviously fails to grasp that the balloon going up in the Middle East will impact upon us all. Col’ Blimp is sadly still with us but the right is a busted flush in Scotland.

  4. martinthorpe says:

    What might I ask is necessarily wrong with ranting? As for the charge that I’m some kind os Tory backwoodsman I could take offence but as the accusation is so, so far wide of the mark I’ll let it pass, but for the record membership of the YCL, CP, LP the SNP and a degree in Peace Studies hardly suggest Daily Mail tendencies, though admittedly I might just be a deep cover MI5 “sleeper”, especially as I own a couple of pairs of cords and tweed jacket.

    Leaving aside the silliness lets get back to the point, namely that those with a genuine interest in a better Scotland should concentrate their efforts and limited intellectual and other resources on precisely that instead of involving themselves in an endless process of breast beating and hair shirt irrelevance.
    As it stands getting a Yes vote in 2014 is going to be little short of a miracle without the distraction of passing judgement on every injustice real and perceived out there in the big bad world. Therefore I repeat, to get ones knickers in a twist about whether the Americans and/or Israelis are going to attack Iran is sadly a complete and utter irrelevance to the issue at hand. Even if the entire nation came out on strike, let alone demonstrated pre-Iraq style (and yes I was on the march in Glasgow) it won’t have the slightest impact on the decision making process in the Pentagon. Its only purpose therefore is posturing, a tradition of which that sadly the Left is only to familiar with.

    No, what needs to be done by those of a progressive bent is to do exactly that which the Left continually shy’s away from doing, namely developing a concrete and intellectually coherent socio-economic alternative to the present – and likely future capitalist system. We’ve had a hundred years plus of misty eyed romanization now is the time to knuckle down and provide the vast majority of non-political Scots with some idea of what we are about. Endlessly criticising the existing order and “indulging” in never ending campaigns against the “cuts” that characterise my forty odd years of being in and around the British Left have achieved in a long view historical context next to nothing. Sure it might keep a few full-time trade unionists in a job but that hardly counts in my book.
    The big issue facing us all (unless you inhabit the top 10% of income earners) is the progressive collapse of the wage labour/effective demand system brought on by the accelerating intensification of capital. Evidence of the break down of this cornerstone of capitalism abounds (and please you SWP’ers out there the falling rate of profit isn’t and never will be anything more than a issue of theological importance) and with it inexorably comes in its wake the one way collapse to the existing economic order. The financial crisis of 2008is merely a symptom and not a cause of our woes and all the Keynesian trickery or neo-liberal austerity won’t reverse this process, though the latter will undoubtably make things worse.

    Figuring out the contours of a post-industrial society where conventional paid employment is not the norm is the great challenge facing us in the 21st century, because if we don’t construct and effectively articulate an alternative serfdom for the majority – what we see happening in Greece is what surely awaits us. And a post-oil currency collapse inspired depression here will be infinitely worse. Again I can’t claim and originality here I got it all from Andre Gorz.

    So, in conclusion you either spend your time and effort on the treadmill of pious outrage or you put your thinking cap on and start actually doing some real work. As I alluded to above I’ve had plenty of experience of conventional political parties and the one common thread that runs through them all is a pathological resistance to the discussion of politics, instead branches are run by train spotting types who view campaigning as the sole reason d’tre of political activity, which probably explains why I haven’t been involved in organised politics for well over a decade.

  5. bellacaledonia says:

    Martin, you raise some fair points about the self-inflicted cul-de-sac that a section of the left continually gets itself stuck in. Grandstanding on overseas issues as substitute for developing strong self-confident communities or a coherent alternative economic strategies (plural) for the 21st century.

    That said, there is a lot we can learn from what is happening internationally, and a lot we need to understand in order to shape our ideas for a future Scotland. Its about balance and priorities.

    Agree that Greece is certainly what could happen – worst case scenario? – if the progressive left concerns itself mainly with the spending side of the economy rather than fair and progressive taxation, re-distribution of power, and a serious approach to sustainable wealth-creation.

    KW

    1. martinthorpe says:

      Kevin,

      Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. I’m sorry that at times as I may come across as (somewhat) belligerent I but its driven by genuine sense of frustration. At the last ever meeting of the LP I attended I said that independence wasn’t a “option” but a necessity. At the time I’d spent a decade plus in and out of crappy retail jobs and my marriage was consequently on the rocks. SI isn’t just about high politics its about practical realities. I now live in London and when the my probation licence expires in twelve months time I’m off on a one way ticket to Thailand. Edinburgh, Scotland, the UK has completely failed me and people like me, university educated generalists who are simply surplus to requirement. I’ve worked as a bin man, postie, painter and decorator and just about everything in-between but to little or no avail.

      Radical, and I mean radical change is imperative if independence is to succeed. Keeping trade union reps, local councillors, MSP’s, civil servants and the rest of the Labour establishment happy and in employment (and happy retirement) isn’t the goal. In fact the strategies required to get the country “moving” are quite likely to run diametrically counter to the entrenched interests of these powerful and politically connected groups.

      I have a friend from Edinburgh who now works as a private consultant (on enormous money) for the Home Office. The story he paints is of a world gone mad; armies of senior civil servants (many of whom are officially “retired” and on their second or third jobs!) all on eye watering salaries and achieving precisely nothing or as close to it as makes no difference.

      London is sucking the economic lifeblood from the rest of the country and in the process hovering in an endless supply of cheap labour from just about everywhere but the UK hinterland. I passed by Highbury & Islington tube station a couple of nights ago as the maintenance crews where waiting for the start of shift, not a word of English amongst the fifty or so lot of them.

      My eyes were opened when I spent three years at Bradford in the late 1980’s. Coming from a background of unquestioning Left assumptions I had to confront the reality that much of what I had casually assumed was sheer balderdash. Here was a community (Pakistani) that had NO interest whatsoever in integration but instead viewed the host as would a parasite, pure and simple – a place to generate money (legitimately and much more importantly illegitimately – heroin, confirmed by my time behind bars), no more no less. In one of your previous podcasts Donald Adamson “observes” that Scotland has an enviable record on race relations, he then goes on to note that the country has a relatively small “ethnic” population but in a wonderful example of Left cognitive dissidence concludes that these two factors are unrelated. Believe me they are not, and please I’m no racist – my business partners are both black; a Nigerian and a Jamaican. Passing judgement on the efficacy of large scale immigration from the (ultimate) ivory tower of Cambridge University takes balls of pure brass.
      In the week I left Edinburgh I went into Morrisons on Ferry Road, almost all the staff were Indians, serving a rat bag collection of the finest of Scotland’s underclass. This is MAD, the former need to get back to their country of birth and help it attain its potential, the drink sodden shits clutching their Giro’s need to be swapped around and put behind the counter. Governance from SW1 will never achieve this, the only hope is the that from EH1 will deliver.

      I’m angry but I have ever right to be.

      All the best and keep up the good work.

      Cheers,

      Martin

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