Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (20 page)

Both Washington and Tel Aviv insist that “all options,” including intense aerial bombardment, remain on the table to stop Iran's nuclear program. In reality, Iran would never launch an offensive military attack on Israel. It could have attacked that country with conventional rockets and bombers years ago. But such an attack would invite devastating retaliation by both the United States and Israel. Iranian rulers may be evil, but they aren't crazy. Washington and Tel Aviv's real concern is that if Iran ever did develop a nuclear capability, it would make a US or Israeli attack far more risky (see
chapter 10
).

Beginning in late 2011, the West sharply escalated sanctions on Iran. Officially, sanctions targeted Iranian leaders and key industries, not ordinary people. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy
Sherman told the US Senate, “US regulations contain an explicit exception from sanctions for transactions for the sale of agricultural commodities, food, medicine, or medical devices.” She went on to say, “We have demonstrated that supporting the Iranian people and pressuring the policies of their government are not mutually exclusive.”
²⁸

But US government officials admitted that the real purpose of sanctions was to worsen conditions on ordinary people so they will pressure their government to reform. In early 2012, the
Washington Post
quoted a “senior US intelligence official” as saying sanctions “will create hate and discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways.”
²⁹
The United States is also pressuring Iran to stop supporting Assad. Such geopolitical strategy talk sounds profound echoing in Washington's towers of power, but US tactics are devastating to the people of Iran, as I found out during a June 2013 visit to Tehran.

Every weekday many dozens of people wait in long lines at the Thirteenth of Aban, a government-run pharmacy that is their last stop to find drugs in short supply. One man unable to fill his prescription shouts angrily as he stomps out. “A lot of people are angry when they can't get their medicine,” “Yusuf Abdi” told me.
³⁰
He was waiting to get a chemotherapy drug and asked that his real name not be used.

Tahereh Karimi, a woman standing in the same line, knew that pharmaceuticals are supposedly excluded from the list of prohibited items under US sanctions. But in reality they are blocked by foreign suppliers afraid of angering the US government. “The United States knows what it is doing,” Karimi said. “Tell Obama not to hurt ordinary people.”
³¹

Partly as a result of sanctions, the Iranian economy has been in free fall. Oil revenues dropped by 50 percent, the local currency lost as much as two-thirds of its value, and inflation hit 40 percent. The drop in the Iranian rial's purchasing power makes importing foreign drugs and medical devices particularly expensive. In addition, Washington has threatened international banks with severe penalties if they break the sanctions. So while banks are supposedly allowed fund transfers for
medicine and medical devices, many find it easier to ban Iranian transactions altogether. “We can't get certain vitamin tablets because we can't send money abroad through the banks,” said Khodadad Asnarshari, administrative director at the Sapir hospital in Tehran.
³²

“Bank hesitation is understandable given that a mistake could earn a bank the wrath of the US Treasury Department and fines that exceed $1 billion,” according to an authoritative study of sanctions issued by the Woodrow Wilson Center.
³³
Pharmacy owner Ghader Daemi Aghdam told me even affluent Iranians in north Tehran are struggling to pay the high cost of medicine. “I estimate 30 percent of my customers walk out when they see the cost of filling their prescriptions,” he said.
³⁴

The impact of sanctions on poor Iranians is even more severe. Sapir, a Jewish charity hospital, serves all faiths but mostly working-class Muslims in south Tehran. Dr. Asnarshari said the cost of imported medical equipment, such as endoscopes, has increased five times since 2012. “We hear that the United States doesn't want people to suffer, but we are.” For example, cancer patient Abadi was unable to find his chemotherapy drug Mabthera at any hospital or private pharmacy. In 2011 Mabthera cost the equivalent of $70 for a one-hundred-milliliter dose. Eight months' worth of treatments costs $840. Today the price has gone up 17 percent, but it's extremely hard to find, even at that price.
³⁵

So Abadi and other patients often take a walk down Nasser Khosro Street. The massive thoroughfare, not far from the city's famous bazaar, is crowded with midday shoppers. Traffic is clogged with cars, motorcycles, and pedestrians all trying hard not to collide with each other.

Within a few minutes of walking down the street, a young man approached me and whispered, “Medicine?” He and dozens of others operate like drug dealers, which they are. They just sell drugs for chemotherapy, diabetes, and hepatitis. The dealers weren't educated men and may not be familiar with the requested drug. The patient usually provided a prescription. Street dealers then made a quick mobile phone call to check availability and price. This day, Abadi's chemo drug was available, but at three times the official cost.

“Our drugs are of the finest quality,” claimed one dealer with the
polished confidence of a used-car salesman. “All the drugs are from Europe.” He said the pharmaceuticals are smuggled from Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, usually in people's luggage. It's impossible to determine the age or quality of the drugs, and patients take real risks when making purchases. Black-market medicine existed for decades in Iran. It began during the horrific years of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). Back then, Iran faced US sanctions as well as massive wartime shortages. Black-market medicine wasn't in high demand again until recently, according to the street dealer. After US and European sanctions were tightened in December 2011, business picked up. “With the new US sanctions, we see more demand,” he said.

Analysts say that not all the medical shortages can be attributed to sanctions. Inflation was a serious problem in Iran long before the intensified US efforts. Iran has a system of subsidies that are popular among ordinary people. The government kept gasoline priced at only fifty cents per gallon. Each individual, including children, got a cash subsidy of thirty-six dollars per month at the official exchange rate. The government also provided subsidies for food, for education, and for young couples when they marry.
³⁶

Unlike government investment in job-producing enterprises or infrastructure, cash subsidies only drove up inflation, according to Mohammad Sadegh Janansefat, a prominent economist and editor of
Industry and Development
magazine in Tehran. Subsidies, without any productive work involved, are like printing extra money. Poor people got the government cash, but prices also went up. The government was always playing catch-up as inflation eroded real income. “The government can't raise its own employees' salaries enough, nor can the private sector,” he told me. “So workers are caught in a squeeze.”
³⁷

Government mismanagement became a big issue in the 2013 presidential elections. A number of candidates accused President Ahmadinejad of illegally funneling money into cash subsidies that were supposed to fund job-development programs. The cash subsidies had populist appeal until inflation sapped their value. Efforts to avoid sanctions also helped foster a climate of corruption. One businessman,
who asked to use only the first name Abbas, said he deposited Iranian rials in an account with a money-changing store in Tehran. The store worked with a partner business in Dubai, which converted rials to dollars and then wired the money to foreign suppliers. The process was reversed when Abbas sold his products abroad. The currency shop made money converting currency and charging for the wire transfers. In turn, shop owners had to pay bribes to Iranian officials in order to stay in business. “Some people are getting very rich off the sanctions,” said Abbas, “while most people are suffering.”
³⁸

Whatever the role of mismanagement and corruption in causing shortages, in the view of most Iranians, the sanctions had made their lives much worse. Even during previous years of high inflation, prices for drugs and medical devices didn't skyrocket as they did in 2013.

Iranians suspect that the sanctions are aimed at changing their country's policies on Syria as well as the nuclear issue. So if the United States and Iran can negotiate a settlement on one, it might help with the other.

On January 20, 2014, the United States, Iran, and other countries began implementing a historic agreement: Iran agreed to freeze its nuclear enrichment program in return for limited sanctions relief. The interim agreement was slated to last six months and lead to a longer-term settlement that would allow Iran to develop nuclear power while blocking any future nuclear weapons program. In return, the West would gradually lift sanctions.

President Rouhani wrote an article clearly stating Iran's position about nuclear weapons:

We are committed not to work toward developing and producing a nuclear bomb. As enunciated in the fatwa issued by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, we strongly believe that the development, production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are contrary to Islamic norms. We never even contemplated the option of acquiring nuclear weapons, because we believe that such weapons could undermine our national-security interests; as a result, they have no place in Iran's security doctrine. Even the perception that Iran may develop
nuclear weapons is detrimental to our security and overall national interest.
³⁹

But even such unequivocal statements weren't enough for American and Israeli right-wingers. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the agreement, claiming Iran couldn't be trusted. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main pro-Israel lobbying group in the United States, initially opposed the agreement and later sought to increase sanctions on Iran in an effort to scuttle a final settlement.
⁴⁰
Israel continued to favor a military attack on Iran to overthrow the regime.

While basing their arguments on Iran's supposed nuclear threat, in reality the right wing feared that the agreement would undercut their ability to attack Iran for supporting Syria and Hezbollah and unravel their justification for regime change in Iran. In their view, the agreement signals US weakness in the face of an implacable enemy.

Weakening of US power in the region creates a “power vacuum,” according to STRATFOR, a think tank located in Austin, Texas, that analyzes geopolitical issues. “The potential for Iran to control a sphere of influence from western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean is a prospect that not only frightens regional players such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, but also raises serious concerns in the United States.”
⁴¹

The hardliners in Iran make much the same argument—but in reverse. If Iran concedes on the nuclear issue, they argue, Iran will appear weak and lose its influence in the region. So the nuclear issue has taken on a political dimension in Iran well beyond the need for more electric power.

Initially, Iranian authorities argued that Iran needed to diversify its sources of electric power. Iran relies too much on oil-burning power plants, an inefficient method of electric power generation, given that Iran's oil reserves are in decline. That was the reason cited by the US government in the 1970s when it arranged for US nuclear energy companies to sell reactors to the Shah.
⁴²
Iran's oil reserves have continued to decline since then.

But why is nuclear power a better solution? Particularly in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, nuclear power is known to be unsafe and extremely expensive. I put the question to Sayed Mohammad Marandi, associate professor, Faculty of World Studies, at the University of Tehran. Nuclear power is “an issue of sovereignty now,” he told me. “When the United States says you can't do it, we will pursue it to the end.” He echoed the arguments of hard-liners in Tehran who said Western sanctions spurred defiance during the eight years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency. “If there were no sanctions, I don't think the Iranian nuclear program would be developed as much as it is today,” said Marandi.
⁴³

Critics said the hard-line stand of Ahmadinejad on nuclear and other issues helped cause Iran's economic disaster long before the imposition of harsh sanctions. The 2013 presidential elections reflected an Iranian desire “to put an end to the mismanagement and failed policies that had endured under the Ahmadinejad government,” according to Reza Marashi and Trita Parsi, leaders of the National Iranian American Council. “The Iranian people had pushed for the same shift in 2009, before the imposition of ‘crippling sanctions,' but the hardliners resorted to fraud and repression to prevent their votes from being counted.”
⁴⁴

The sharp differences between reformers and hard-liners in Iran also manifested itself in the debate about its Syria policy. Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guard, and other hard-liners remained steadfast in their economic and military support for the Assad regime. They seemed to have the full support of Supreme Leader Khamenei. In December 2012, Iran put forward a peace plan that sought to maintain Iranian influence in Syria. It called for a cease-fire and the lifting of sanctions against Syria, the release of political prisoners, the formation of a transitional government, and then the holding of free elections under international supervision. The plan closely resembled one proposed by the United Nations with an important difference: Tehran wanted Assad to be part of the transitional government, a position immediately rejected by the opposition.

But a year later, after continued military stalemate and election of a new president, cracks began to show within the Iranian elite. President Rouhani made a surprising comment during a national TV appearance in September 2013. He contrasted Iran's sharp criticism of the dictatorship in Bahrain with its stand on Syria. “We should not describe as oppressive brutal actions in an enemy country while refraining from calling the same actions oppressive if they take place in a friendly country,” he said, clearly referring to Syria. “Brutality must be called brutality.”
⁴⁵