By Gregg Carlstrom
Spencer Ackerman talked yesterday with Jeremy Ben-Ami, the director of J Street, to find out why his group supports Rep. Howard Berman's Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act.
Critics (including Spencer) think J Street caved to pressure from the right wing of the American Jewish community. But Ben-Ami said sanctions were always the next step if diplomatic engagement failed or stalled.
We've said all along that our position on the Berman bill was simply a question of timing. This need to follow, first, the diplomatic engagement. And even then the president said, that we can't go on with [the outreach] indefinitely. So this gives the president this tool, this additional tool, to work with in trying to convince the Iranians that there's no time.
I think this is a case of the left-wing Jewish community projecting its own views onto J Street. Fact is, the group always left the door open to supporting tougher sanctions on Iran. J Street isn't doing anything unexpected. Disappointing, yes -- wrong-headed, sure -- but not surprising.
One point that's weirdly absent from the sanctions debate -- and Spencer doesn't really bring this up with Jeremy -- is that nobody thinks they will work. As Matt Duss demonstrated last week, there isn't a single analyst -- on either end of the political spectrum -- who honestly thinks tougher sanctions, even a gasoline embargo, will change the regime's behavior.
So we're debating a policy with no demonstrable upside, and a range of nasty downsides. Tougher sanctions could drive up world oil prices; they could undercut the Green Movement, still risking life and limb to protest; they could have a devastating impact on the Iranian poor and middle classes (Iraq in the 1990s remains a haunting example). Oh, and a gasoline embargo could be perceived as an act of war.
No upside; steep downsides. And yet we're still discussing this policy! Why?
Sanctions proponents don't care if the sanctions themselves are ineffective -- they see sanctions as simply an increment to their real goal, which is a war. As long as the US is sanctioning Iran, the US is not negotiating nor engaging Iran -- which suits the pro-Israelis just fine. This is part of Dennis Ross' strategy of making the inevitable war more palatable and sellable.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, if the sanctions are ineffective, all the better. That's just another excuse to demand "tightening" them further -- yet another incremental step towards confrontation. Gasoline sanctions are ineffective? Ha! So, we have to impose a naval embargo to tighten them up... etc. etc.
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