Can Europe’s oil boycott really sink Iran? – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs

Editor’s Note: Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.  The following is reprinted from his blog Informed Comment. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Juan Cole.

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

The European Union threatened Iran on Monday with cutting off petroleum imports into the 27 EU member states, and announced sanctions on Iranian banks and some port and other companies.

Iran sells 18 percent of its petroleum to Europe, and Greece, Italy and Spain are particularly dependent on it. Europe also sells Iran nearly $12 billion a year in goods, which likely will cease, since there will be no way for Iran to pay for these goods. Some in Europe worry that the muscular anti-Iran policy of the UK, France and Germany in northern Europe will worsen the economic crisis of southern Mediterranean countries such as Greece.

Others think that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is still primitive and that allegations that Iran is seeking a nuclear warhead are hype.

About 60% of Iran’s petroleum now goes to Asian countries, especially China, India, South Korea and Japan. China and India have no announced plans to reduce purchases of Iranian crude, and South Korea says it will seek an exemption from the US so as to continue to import. Japan says it plans only very slowly to reduce imports from Iran. Iran and India have just reached an agreement whereby some trade with Iran will be in rupees, to sidestep US sanctions. Indian firms are considering whether to fill the $8 billion gap in exports to Iran left by the Western sanctions (many do not want to be cut off from also exporting to the US, as they would be if third party sanctions were applied to them).

Can Europe’s oil boycott really sink Iran? – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs.

Iran and Islam | The Iran Primer

Iran and Islam,  A primer

Via: Juan Cole

Iran is a theocracy that mixes religion and state more thoroughly than any other country in the world.

Shiite Islam gives a special place to its clerics and demands blind obedience to their rulings on religious law.

The commemoration of the martyrdom of holy figures is central to Shiite religious sensibilities and plays out in Iran’s populist politics.

Since 1979, the Islamic Republic has imposed a strongly patriarchal order, but pious women have found ways to assert themselves in society and education.

The contemporary Shiite revival has given Iran influence in the Muslim world and especially among other Shiite communities in the Arab world and South Asia, challenging the Sunni secular nationalists and traditional monarchies.

Overview

The 1979 revolution unseated the last dynasty to rule Iran from the Peacock Throne. But it also represented a revolution within Shiism, which had traditionally shunned direct clerical involvement in politics. Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini introduced the idea of clerical supervision of a modern republican state that has all three standard branches of government—the executive, legislature and judiciary.

Iran is today the world’s only clerically-ruled government. Shiite Islam is not just the religion of state, but also forms the framework for a theocracy. As such, religion and politics are inseparable. The starting point for debates in Iran is not secular law and civil rights, but the tradition of Muslim jurisprudence and practice called the Sharia. Lively debates center on issues such as the nature of a just government, women’s rights in Islam, economic justice and the extent of limits on personal liberty. Since the mid-1990s, the Iranian political divide has also played out over the balance of power between the republican and religious nature of the state.

via Iran and Islam | The Iran Primer.

News Desk: Postscript: Marie Colvin, 1956-2012 : The New Yorker

February 22, 2012

POSTSCRIPT: MARIE COLVIN, 1956-2012

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It is not yet clear if the Syrian government deliberately targeted the building in which Colvin and Ochlik, and a number of other journalists, were working. (The Times described it as a “makeshift media center.”) At least three other journalists were apparently injured in the same attack. All this suggests that the Assad regime may have begun a direct assault on the media, though that remains unclear. Many of the foreign reporters filing from Syria have done so after sneaking across the border.

Colvin would be the first to demand that we concentrate less on her own death than on the outrage of the Syrian Army, under the command of a tyrant too often described as a “mild-mannered” eye doctor, slaughtering its own people. And it is all being carried out with arms and diplomatic cover from Vladimir Putin.

Like Shadid, Colvin devoted her life—and gave her life—for the proposition that the truth of history demands witnesses. Her death, like Shadid’s, like that of so many others, is yet another reminder, as if any more were needed, that experience in the field is no shelter from disaster. In November 2010, at St. Bride’s Church in London, Colvin was one of the speakers at a service called Truth At All Costs to honor the hundreds of journalists who have died in war zones over the years. The Duchess of Cornwall was there. As ever, Colvin spoke best for herself as she described the essential place of war reporting and the inner calculus of risk. Here are a few paragraphs, but I would hope you will read it all:

Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen, I am honored and humbled to be speaking to you at this service tonight to remember the journalists and their support staff who gave their lives to report from the war zones of the twenty-first century. I have been a war correspondent for most of my professional life. It has always been a hard calling. But the need for frontline, objective reporting has never been more compelling.

Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction, and death, and trying to bear witness. It means trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of propaganda when armies, tribes or terrorists clash. And yes, it means taking risks, not just for yourself but often for the people who work closely with you.

Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defense or the Pentagon, and all the sanitized language describing smart bombs and pinpoint strikes, the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children.

Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?

via News Desk: Postscript: Marie Colvin, 1956-2012 : The New Yorker.

EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION | The Perspective

Causes

Hosni Mubarak turned Gamal Nasser’s “Arab-Socialist” state-capitalist policies of the previous 26 years (which included nationalizing various industries and redistributing agricultural land) into dictatorial-capitalist policies, undoing the gains Nasser’s administration afforded by amplifying inequality.

Since 1967 Mubarak has upheld and abused the national Emergency Law, which suspends vital constitutional rights and expands police powers, allowing officers to arrest individuals without explanation or accountability. The law is up for extension every three years, and just last May, Mubarak approved its continuation.

Corruption is pervasive in Egypt, where elections are typically unfair and undemocratic. Last year’s parliamentary elections were marred with allegations of fraud and illegitimacy.

Egypt was clearly inspired by Tunisia’s revolution. Watching Tunisians revolt until Ben Ali fled the country emboldened Egyptians to demonstrate and call for an end to their own dictatorship.

Who is protesting?

Initially driven by Egypt’s youth—primarily through social media such as Facebook or Twitter—millions of Egyptians from all economic, social, and religious backgrounds marched in the streets, demanding Mubarak’s resignation and free, fair elections.

No one political party or group guided these protests alone; it was a unity of the Egyptian people against their perceived long-term oppressor. Mubarak initially attributed the protests to exterior forces manipulating the Egyptian people.

Solidarity between Muslim and Christian Egyptians has been on full display. On multiple occasions, Christians guarded and protected Muslim protesters—who  paused from their uprising to pray—from the assault and attacks of the pro-government police forces. This reciprocation came weeks after thousands of Muslims attended Coptic Christmas Eve mass and voluntarily served as human shields to protect Coptic Christians from militant Islamic forces, revealing a unity despite religious differences and further emphasizing that this revolution has been predominately a class revolution, not a religious one.

Regional Impact

The Arab world has watched Egypt closely. Just as Tunisia inspired Egypt’s citizens to revolt, protesters in Jordan, Yemen, Algeria, and Bahrain are now protesting for major reform after watching Mubarak fall.

Numerous surrounding leaders are being forced to concede to the will of the people. According to David Remnick, “In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh declared that he would neither run for reëlection nor install his son in office. In Jordan, King Abdullah fired his Cabinet and met with the opposition.” More recently, 7 members of Yemeni parliament resigned, protesting government violence.

Most notably, though, Libyan citizens are clashing with government forces in a nationwide uprising. As of Feb. 26, protesters claim control of 30% of the country, despite a violent crackdown. Leader Col. Gaddafi has hired mercenaries to join soldiers in firing on the people. [Link to Brandon’s Libya article.]

Even the Palestinian cabinet resigned in response to the Arab revolutions, leading an Al Jazeera analyst to note, “For the past 50 years, people have been living in fear of their leaders but now the leaders are living in fear of the people.”

via EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION | The Perspective.

KAYAOĞLU: Turkey’s Crackdown on the Press recalls Military’s Tactics | Informed Comment

The NGO Reporters Without Borders has demoted Turkey by 10 places in its World Press Freedom Index rankings for 2011-2012. The report’s statement that “the judicial system launched a wave of arrests of journalists that was without precedent since the military dictatorship [of the early 1980s]” reminded me of the “Back to the Future” movie series.

In the trilogy, the heroes use a time machine to go back and forth between the past and the future, which causes them to inadvertently change events and cause new problems. As Turkey tries to solve its old problems with outdated means, it faces the same contradiction as the heroes of “Back to the Future”: without learning from the mistakes of its past, Turkey seems destined to repeating them.

via KAYAOĞLU: Turkey’s Crackdown on the Press recalls Military’s Tactics | Informed Comment.

Report Finds Network News Misrepresents Intelligence On Iran Nuclear Issues | ThinkProgress

A new report from Media Matters released today finds that the broadcast news networks — NBC Nightly News, ABC’s World News and CBS’s Evening News — “frequently” distort or exaggerate key information regarding Iran’s nuclear program. “Two egregious misrepresentations in particular repeatedly came up,” the report says, reports “suggesting that Iran will imminently obtain the bomb and suggesting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has major influence over the country’s nuclear program.”

Indeed, as the report notes, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said that it would take about three years for Iran to have a deliverable nuclear weapon should it make the decision to embark on a nuclear weapons program (the IAEA and U.S. and Israeli intelligence all agree that Iran has not made this decision). Moreover, Ahmadinejad is irrelevant to that decision. As the Associated Press noted in a report on an Iran intelligence assessment, it is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “whose word is final on nuclear and other issues.”

via Report Finds Network News Misrepresents Intelligence On Iran Nuclear Issues | ThinkProgress.

Juan Cole: US Sanctions, a ‘blockade’ of Iranian Petroleum – YouTube

Juan Cole: US Sanctions, a ‘blockade’ of Iranian Petroleum – YouTube.

After a meeting between Iran and five UN Security Council members in Turkey over the weekend, the Iranian Foreign Minister said today that Iran is ready to solve all nuclear disputes “quickly and easily” at another round of talks in Baghdad next month. But the Iranian foreign minister also urged for sanctions that have been put in place by the US and other western countries to be lifted. Juan Cole, blogger and University of Michigan professor discusses.