#IranDeal : Detailed analysis of deal shows that there is no basis for the dramatic scenario posited by Netanyahu. http://t.co/3SmYEbLQou
— Denise Ingram (@leclemot) August 8, 2015The impact of sanctions outside my academic bubble is far worse. Vitamins have become hard to find. My mother’s supplements disappeared off the market, as did tampons and foreign-made baby formulas. We went to drugstore after drugstore across the city but were told the same thing everywhere: The item you want is no longer being imported due to sanctions. My grandfather’s German-made eye drops vanished. The Iranian ones hurt his eyes. More critically, vital cancer medication has become excessively difficult to get ahold of. Between 2011 and 2014, while visiting sick relatives, I met patient after patient in the hospital whose condition had become critical due to delayed treatment…. Almost like a joke, cancer rates appear to have climbed, as well. Some doctors blame new, low-quality domestic gasoline. While Tehran has always suffered from air pollution, we’ve begun to witness unprecedented levels — sometimes, looking over the gray-green haze that covers the city, it becomes impossible to breathe.
Almost as long as I can remember, Iran has been viewed as a rogue nation- a political villain playing by its own rules and respecting the international community only insofar as it served their narrow Islamofascist interests. Prior to 1979, Iran wasn’t much on the radar for Americans, though scholars knew it as a historical crossroad and the beginning of much of mankind’s history. The Iranian revolution, besides bringing the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and a class of intensely conservative religious zealots to power, profoundly embarrassed and angered Americans. As had happened in Vietnam, Americans were reminded that possessing the world’s most powerful economy and military was no guarantee of invulnerability. In fact, Iran proved that our vulnerability was in direct correlation to American power…and the arrogance with which it was wielded around the world. Americans were used to shaping the world, to helping create political systems that were favorable to American business interests. Iran showed what can happen when a committed class of revolutionaries hates everything America claims to stand for.
What we saw as freedom and opportunity looked to Iranian revolutionaries like imperialism, economic oppression, and secular sinfulness. Sure, an argument could be made that what those inside Iran saw of the U.S. was the product of propaganda that played on fear and ignorance, but the result was that we were viewed and defined as “The Great Satan.” Almost immediately after the American Embassy in Tehran was taken over by revolutionaries, the polarization was complete. There was no hope of any sort of rapprochement with American hostages being held and Iranians convinced they’d defeated “The Great Satan.”
The fall of the embassy, and the 444-day hostage crisis that followed, was the single biggest reason Jimmy Carter wasn’t re-elected in 1980. With Americans tired of feeling as if they’d been defeated by a cabal of rabble-rousers, Ronald Reagan offered a way out- peace through strength. In fact, it could be argued that what came to be known as the Iranian Hostage Crisis was directly responsible for the corrupt, self-serving eight years that was Ronald Reagan’s Presidency.
Iranian banks are cut off from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunications), effectively cutting off financial communication between Iran and other countries. The private sector has been hit badly. The textile and automobile industries have been especially affected, with many plants completely shutting down entirely. Across industries, obtaining spare parts or requesting maintenance for machines has become extremely expensive, in some cases impossible. Two of Iran’s main non-petroleum exports, handmade carpets and pistachios, have started piling up in basements.
All of this has sent the economy into free fall. The new sanctions led to unprecedented inflation, as high as 40 percent according to some estimates, which in turn caused a sudden spike in the price of basic commodities like milk and vegetable oil. Some crucial goods are available only on the black market, and there is no way — official or otherwise — to know how bad inflation has gotten there.
Since 1979, Iran has been a perpetual thorn in the collective side of American policymakers. Too large to bomb into submission, and too unpredictable to invade, the question of how to pacify Iran has bedeviled both Republican and Democratic administrations. In typical American fashion, we’ve viewed our ongoing conflict with Iran through our own filter while completely ignoring the reality on the ground in Iran. The varying levels of sanctions over the years has largely crippled the Iranian economy, severely impacting the day to day lives of Iranians without seemingly having had much of an impact on successive governments.
This excellent piece by an Iranian writing under a pseudonym provides a look into what life has been like living in Iran under international sanctions. As the country has been squeezed over the years, even things available through the black market have become harder to find. Americans tend not to think about such things, because we take for granted being able to get whatever we want pretty much whenever we want it. We can’t imagine being denied access to the staples and luxuries we take for granted…because we’ve never had to. That’s been the daily reality in Iran for almost all of the past 36 years.
The recent nuclear treaty agreed to by Iranian and international negotiators represents a way out of this morass for everyone, in particular Iranians who’ve lived with scarcity for in some cases their entire lives. It’s not a perfect agreement by any means- for most Conservatives, only Iran bowing completely and utterly to American demands would be- but it represents a chance to change the calculus of American-Iranian relations, as well as the rhetoric.
Both American and Iran have the opportunity to break the cycle of mistrust and propaganda. Why would we NOT want to give peace a chance? Isn’t it time that both governments stopped punishing the people of Iran? IF Iran proves to be untrustworthy, the treaty allows for a “snap back,” the reimposition of economic sanctions…so why not provide Iran with some rope? With any luck they’ll use it to pull the Iranian people out of the hole they’ve been in since 1979.
It’s time we gave them a chance.
