Since the Nuclear talks between Iran and the Western powers have failed, new proposals to enforce stronger economic sanctions on Iran are now in the works. Bloomberg News reported that Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) said in a phone interview that “New measures under consideration will massively intensify the economic pressure on Iran and move the sanctions regime closer to a de facto commercial and financial embargo on Iran.”
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a Washington affiliated think tank that is calling for an economic embargo that would cause mass starvation and poverty among the Iranian people. Due to past sanctions Iranians are already suffering from high unemployment, inflation, medicine shortages, and even food riots. Basic food staples have doubled in prices. Chicken and certain meats have become scarce. FDD has several members who are in favor of sanctioning Iran including syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer who called for ending all assistance for humanitarian aid after Hamas won democratic elections in Palestine. In an article he wrote for the Washington Post in 2006 called ‘Palestine without Illusions’ he wrote:
“The world must impress upon the Palestinians that there are consequences for their choices. And so long as they choose rejectionism — the source of a 60-year conflict the Israelis have long been ready to resolve — the world will not continue to support and subsidize them.
And that means cutting off Hamas completely: no recognition, no negotiation, no aid, nothing. And not just assistance to a Hamas government, but all assistance. The Bush administration suggests continuing financial support for “humanitarian” services. This is a serious mistake.”
Charles Krauthammer was implying that Palestinians should be allowed to starve because they voted for Hamas. Hamas was democratically elected, but according to Krauthammer they are a clear threat to Israel’s existence, therefore cut off food supplies and medicines that the Palestinians desperately need. Richard Perle is another member of FDD who was one of the architects for the Project for a New American Century and is an influential member of several think tanks including American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Hudson Institute and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). WINEP is the same think tank that employs the Director of Research Patrick Clawson who advocated for a ‘False Flag’ incident to go to war with Iran in 2012 when he said:
“One can combine other means of pressure with sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down, some day one of them might not come up, who would know why? We can do a variety of things if we wish to increase the pressure… We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier.
Richard Perle was one of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration that advocated for an invasion of Iraq but denied the accusation in an article he wrote for The National Interest in 2009:
I have digressed to describe my relationship to the Bush administration because I have been widely but wrongly depicted as deeply involved in the making of administration policy, especially with respect to Iraq. Facts notwithstanding, there are some fifty thousand entries on Google in which I am described as an “architect,” and often as “the architect,” of the Iraq War. I certainly supported and argued publicly for the decision to remove Saddam, as I do in what follows. But had I been the architect of that war, our policy would have been very different.
UNDERSTANDING BUSH’S foreign and defense policy requires clarity about its origins and the thinking behind the administration’s key decisions. That means rejecting the false claim that the decision to remove Saddam, and Bush policies generally, were made or significantly influenced by a few neoconservative “ideologues” who are most often described as having hidden their agenda of imperial ambition or the imposition of democracy by force or the promotion of Israeli interests at the expense of American ones or the reshaping of the Middle East for oil-or all of the above. Despite its seemingly endless repetition by politicians, academics, journalists and bloggers, that is not a serious argument.
In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee joint hearing with the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on May 21st, 1998, Richard Perle said that Saddam Hussein was responsible for causing the Iraqi people to starve, not US government policies:
The United States, mass-marketer to the world, is losing a propaganda war with Saddam Hussein, mass-murderer of his own citizens, over the issue of humanitarian concern. With much of the world believing that Iraqi babies are starving because of U.S. policies rather than the policies of Saddam Hussein, we are facing a political-diplomatic defeat of historic significance in the Gulf and the Administration, bereft of ideas, energy or imagination, is doing nothing to stop it.
FDD also has R. James Woolsey former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who blamed Iraq for every terrorist attack committed against the United States including the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and even the World Trade Center bombing of 1993. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a highly influential think tank concerning US foreign policy towards the Middle East. Their policies have influenced the Bush Administration during the US invasion of Iraq.
In a report by thinkprogress.org, ‘EXCLUSIVE: Documents Shed Light on Those Underwriting the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) has been a vocal presence in Washington since its founding in the days following the 9/11 attacks as a self-described “nonpartisan policy institute dedicated exclusively to promoting pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that threaten democracy.” But FDD’s position consistently fell in line with the Bush administration’s militant “war on terror” and policies espoused by Israel’s right wing Likud party. In recent years, FDD has become one of the premiere DC organizations promoting more aggressive actions against Iran.
Mark Dubowitz is advising Washington to impose harsh economic and financial sanctions on Iran. Washington’s strategy is to create instability by declaring an economic war on the Iranian people. In an article written by Jacob Kamaras of the JointMedia News Service (jns.org) titled ‘Do Iran Sanctions Work’ in 2012 stated US Representative Brad Sherman in a private meeting at an AIPAC conference as saying “Hard, strict sanctions that impact everyday life in Iran could encourage its people to choose between regime survival and its nuclear program.” Washington wants to impose sanctions that will make life difficult for Iranian citizens in hopes that they can start a revolution to overthrow their government. Washington would welcome a revolution that would overthrow the current Iranian government and replace it with one that is subservient to its interests.
In 1979, the Iranian people overthrew Washington’s puppet, the Shah of Iran, replacing him with the Ayatollah Khomeini. It changed Iran’s government from a monarchy into an Islamic Republic. The Bloomberg report also stated that the sanctions “would penalize foreign countries that do business with any Iranian entity controlled by the government. It also would bar Iran from using earnings from oil exports to purchase anything other than food and medicine.” Meaning Russia, China, India, Germany, South Korea, Japan, France, Italy, Cuba and others who trade with Iran would face penalties imposed by the United States. “The draft Senate legislation, which would have to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by President Barack Obama, would target Iran’s foreign exchange holdings by cutting off its access to hard currencies, including the euro, and restricting its use of money exchange houses” the report said.
Iran will face more sanctions as the draft Senate legislation is expected to pass both houses of congress with President Obama giving his final approval with his signature by the end of this month. Obama is following the same strategy as previous US administrations, and that is to create economic difficulties for the Iranian people with the hope that they would overthrow their government. It is intended to create “Regime Change”.
It was the same idea that was used in Cuba in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro by the Cuban people with an economic and financial Embargo back in 1960. But obviously that did not work out well for every US administration since then. It will not work in Iran either. Expect tensions to rise in the coming months ahead.
