August 21st, 2009 by Blake

After President Ahmadinejad submitted his full cabinet nominations to parliament yesterday, today, the head of the powerful Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, has called for the arrest of those who led the post-election unrest, in reference to Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Crackdown on the opposition, calls for arrests and mass trials, writes Haleh Esfandiari in the Washington Post, are all a product of serious paranoia on part of the Iranian regime, which could lead to its dissolution. In fact, today Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani acknowledged splits among Iranian conservatives since the election fallout.

Meanwhile, today Iran opened its Arak site to UN inspectors. Will Ward at the National presents the case for not sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program. Iran’s Achilles heel is its underdeveloped refining capacity, which forces it to import oil, writes Ward. This weakness is precisely the target of the proposed Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (H.R.2194). Yet, Ward writes,current opposition to the bill–mainly focused on the negative effects of sanctions on ordinary Iranians and Iran’s ability to circumvent sanctions by reaching out to China and Russia–overlooks the fact that sanctions on Iran could be devastating for trade in the entire region, and hurt America’s Gulf allies:

“Sanctions, particularly on consumer products with mass demand like petrol, tend to produce distortions in regional trade dynamics that can have political repercussions. Powerful incentives are generated to meet demand for the sanctioned products, inside and outside of the targeted state, creating economic imbalances in the region and political tensions with the state that has imposed the sanctions. And in the case of petrol sanctions on Iran these consequences are likely to be acute, given the long and storied history of trade relations across the Gulf.”

Posted in Elections, Gulf, Iran, US foreign policy |