Concerns Over Iran
Since the invasion of the Middle East a few years ago, the United States has turned its focused attention back to the country of Iran. The Middle Eastern country of Iran has been developing processes and materials that can be used in the development of nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly said that the development of nuclear capability is not for WMD creation, but for peaceful energy and other resource use. The United States has imposed economic sanctions since the 90’s and has continued to renew these sanctions in hopes of bringing the Iranian economy to the brink of destruction, as well as in hopes of finding that the current regime located in Tehran will open up its nuclear development to international institutes transparency requirements (or that the country will stop development all together).
According to TIME, the economic sanctions are beginning to have the effect that the U.S and other countries in the international arena have hoped for. The rial (the currency of Iran) has fallen sharply in value in comparison of value to the U.S dollar and, as a result, basic supplies such as food and medicine have climbed to much higher prices. The events of this past week have shown physical results of the impacts of economic sanctions as protests occurred in Tehran to the displeasure of the current regime. Although, as stated in an article by Tony Karon, it is unlikely that the government will budge on this issue due to purely economic sanctions as regimes of this type have been known to persevere through these types of hardships at the expense of their citizens.
Other international sanctions are being called for by Israel, who is at the heart of this conflict. Israel has called for more EU sanctions in the wake of the U.S decreasing its attention on Iran (in lieu of the presidential elections which hold much more important domestic concerns and outcomes at the moment). Israel has been insistent on multi-lateral cooperations in the ending of Iran’s nuclear development program, but it still has the possibility of coming to war terms if no progress is made in the eventual future, which will probably prolong and add more sanctions to avoid a potentially bloody and long war. For Israel and the U.S, producing as big a multi-lateral cooperation as possible is key in their goal of imposing economic sanctions. The more countries that participate and approve the sanctions, the more legitimacy the sanctions have and more detrimental they will be to the Iranian economy and government. Avoiding a war with Iran is crucial to amending relations in the Middle East. Especially with the U.S already having forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, a war with Iran could and probably would end negotiations and peace-making processes with those countries–something that has been in the works for a while now. The current approach is to continue more sanctions in hopes that the country will come to international institutional terms of nuclear development without incurring a potentially international war.
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