I’ve recently been following some developments on the Iranian front. There appears to be another effect the most recent round of sanctions have had on Iran – Sanctions Slow Development of Natural Gas Field in Iran
Threatened by tougher international and U.S. penalties that target the financing of oil projects and technical support for Iran’s energy sector, Western firms such as Shell, Total and Halliburton have pulled out of the development of the South Pars gas field. South Pars is the Iranian portion of a natural gas reservoir about two miles below the Persian Gulf between Iran and Qatar. The reservoir is the world’s largest gas field, covering 3,745 square miles and containing an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of gas. About 38 percent of it lies below Iran’s territorial waters.
On Saturday, the engineering and construction arm of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Khatam ol-Anbia, which is also under new U.N. and U.S. sanctions, unexpectedly withdrew from two key gas refinery projects. It also refrained from bidding on the three final parts of the South Pars gas field, said Mohammad Hassan Mousavizadeh, a technical adviser to the state-owned Pars Oil and Gas Co.
“In the present circumstances, it is possible that continued activity . . . will endanger national resources,” Khatam ol-Anbia said in a statement after the pullout.
However Daniel Pipes, in a recent interview doubts whether sanctions would have an effect. (via memeorandum)
I don’t think so. I don’t think sanctions have any value beyond window dressing. I don’t think agreements have any value. I don’t think threats have any value. It boils down to whether we accept the Iranian nuclear program or we destroy it.
(Israel Matzav focuses on a different aspect of the interview. Perhaps the most controversial suggestion made by Dr. Pipes.)
In addition Michael Ledeen believes that the Iranian regime has lost a measure of control:
Moreover, in the city of Zahedan — where the murderous suicide attacks took place last week (the best coverage, as usual, was from Banafsheh, who was first with the pictures of the killers) — the Revolutionary Guards control things during the day, but once night falls, anti-regime forces, many of them armed, take to the streets. In short, the people have lost their fear. The regime may very well arrest them, beat them, torture them, and kill them, but it is getting more and more difficult to control them.
Very few news stories noticed the two most significant aspects of the bombing at the Zahedan mosque. The first was the regime’s panicky reaction: at first they announced, correctly, that the attack had been carried out by Balouch fighters. Then they realized that this was bad for the regime, since they had bragged for some time that the Revolutionary Guards had shut down all possibility of protest, following last year’s devastating suicide bombing of a big RG meeting in the region. So they quickly changed their story, reverting to the party line that anything bad in Iran is the fault of the Satanic forces embodied in the United States and Israel.
The second key feature of the attack in Zahedan was the day on which it occurred: it was Pasdar day, the occasion of celebrating the great strength and virtue of the Revolutionary Guards. Supreme leader Ali Khamenei himself had delivered the official tribute that very morning in the capital. The suicide bombing showed that the regime is not in control of the situation, and that the people have not accepted its authority.
These two items are positive developments. (I’m not meaning to applaud the death of innocents.) The degree to which they are helpful are not at all clear.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
“So they quickly changed their story, reverting to the party line that anything bad in Iran is the fault of the Satanic forces embodied in the United States and Israel.”
I don’t know if Ledeen knows the score, but apparently Iran doesn’t: the suicide bombers – not unlike the majority of them in Iraq – take their orders from the Saudis. If this Iranian attack goes through – regardless of from what quarter it emanates – the 18th c. cult of Wahhabism will be the face of the Mideast (and, thanks to Saudi petrodollars, the face of Islam globally). It will be like the time that the Puritans (Cromwell, ad nauseam) dealt a mortal wound to Christianity in the West. Increasingly, the religion of the Anglo-American world became .. commercial enterprise. Those are the values we’ve chosen and, because the Saudis have *money*, we are pretty much at their mercy ..
Sanctions? But Dad, isn’t that collective punishment? After all, they will affect the people of Iran, not just their government. And since the world rose as one to condemn Israeli sanctions on Gaza, I am perplexed as to why it doesn’t apply the same principle to Iran.
Oops, I forgot what Meryl persists in calling the Exception Clause but is more properly termed “the Bensky Corollary To Everything:” Every statement, policy, or pronouncement by anyone, anywhere, at any time, contains the tacit proviso: “Except Jews.”