WarSclerotic

Iran: It Is All Good.

September 20, 2014: The impact of the UN sanctions have been made worse by the falling price of oil. Iran and its ally Russia are two countries that are economically very dependent on oil revenue and the falling oil price is a major, and growing, problem.

This oil price decrease is caused largely by American innovations (fracking) that have unlocked huge quantities of oil and natural gas. For example, in 2010 foreign oil accounted for half the oil consumed in the United States. That is now 20 percent and falling rapidly.

The U.S. expects to be a major oil and natural gas exporter soon and that hurts the economies of Iran and Russia a great deal.  Meanwhile the fighting with ISIL is hurting Iran economically as a natural gas pipeline Iran is building to Iraq (to sell lots of unused natural gas) goes through territory currently controlled or threatened by ISIL. Some Iranian construction workers have been fired on by ISIL and most have been withdrawn from threatened areas until ISIL is destroyed or driven away.

The negotiations to end the sanctions against Iran are still stalled. Iran missed the agreed upon July deadline to come up with an agreeable compromise and now there are more sanctions imposed. Iran continues to refuse acceptable inspections and monitoring of its nuclear program to assure the rest of the world that there really is no nuclear program. But many foreign intelligence agencies (especially the U.S., Europe and Israel) have lots of evidence that the weapons program exists and Iran simply dismisses this evidence without offering credible proof that the charges are false.

Many Western politicians are uneasy with the fact that they are now de-facto allies with Iran and the Syrian Assad dictatorship as well as rebel groups that are openly Islamic terrorists and hostile to the West. Iran wants to destroy the West but at the moment it’s a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my ally whether I like it or not.” Despite official bans on cooperation there is some informal military coordination with Iran and the Assads. Meanwhile the Iranian government is encouraging the rumor that ISIL is part of an American plot to hurt Iran. This sort of thing is believed by most Iranians and many Arabs as well, who see the Western operations against ISIL as another form of the Western “war on Islam”. This conspiracy theory is so popular that many Arab states are reluctant to get too involved with the mainly Western coalition formed to stop ISIL. This is despite the fact that ISIL is a very immediate threat to Iran and all Arab states in the region. Iran backs the “ISIL is an American plot” in part to show their anger at the growing sanctions and Iranian efforts to formally coordinate anti-ISIL operations.

The Iranians appear to believe that the U.S. air strikes and all the military aid (from Iran, the U.S. and other NATO nations) going to the Iraqi Kurds, plus a new government in Iraq, will be able to deal with ISIL in Iraq.  Iran has been very active in supporting the Shia Arab government in Iraq against ISIL, but not very public about it. This is because many of the things that ISIL is hated for (restrictions on women and on what people drink and do for entertainment) are the same things that have long been enforced in Iran. It is possible for Iran to condemn the ISIL tendency to slaughter lots of people just for being different (not Islamic or not Islamic enough) but they are reluctant to go into much detail, as least in the media. Iran would like ISIL to just go away, permanently and with great violence if necessary.

All the Gulf states (Arabs and Iran) agree that extreme radical groups, especially one like ISIL that have declared themselves the leader of the Islamic world (by declaring a caliphate run by ISIL) are a threat to all Moslems. Actually, ISIL has a lot of supporters throughout the Islamic world, but these people are a minority (a few percent to maybe twenty or so in some countries) and most of these supporters would change their minds if they actually had to live under ISIL rule. That said, Saudi Arabia has long enforced strict Islamic lifestyle rules similar to those used by ISIL and beheads those who are major offenders of those rules. But the Saudis have courts and limits on the authority of those enforcing Islamic law. That makes a big difference, big enough to get a lot of Moslem countries that are at odds with each other over a wide variety of issues to finally have one thing they can unite against.

Al Qaeda also condemns ISIL, initially for ignoring al Qaeda orders to tone down the barbaric treatment (mass murder and torture) of the enemy because al Qaeda realized that this eventually extreme and triggers a backlash from other Moslems. Iran condemns ISIL because to them all Shia (meaning nearly all Iranians) are heretics and deserving of summary execution. Iran-backed Hezbollah is now using that ISIL threat against Lebanon to justify Hezbollah grabbing more power in Lebanon, where Shia are a third of the population but far more powerful politically because Iranian cash, weapons and training have made Hezbollah too strong for the elected Lebanese government to suppress or even oppose effectively. In Syria, the minority (Shia) Assad government, fighting a Sunni rebellion since 2011, now calls on their current Sunni enemies (Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arabs, plus the Sunni majority in Syria) to join with them in destroying ISIL. There is not much public support for this, because the Assads are seen as vicious oppressors of Sunni Moslems (who own most of the oil in Arabia and comprise 80 percent of all Moslems). Nevertheless, the presence of a common threat (ISIL) has forced a temporary truce in the growing conflict between Shia (led by Iran) and Sunnis (led by Saudi Arabia).

So whatever else ISIL has done it has united many other Sunni factions and the Shia in the region into an uneasy anti-ISIL coalition. But even after ISIL is gone, Islamic radicalism will still be there. For most Moslems this radicalism is like the weather; every Moslem talks about but Moslems cannot seem to do anything to eliminate or even control it.

Iranian aid can make a big difference, even if the Iranians don’t send in troops to fight. For example, thanks to Iranian trainers and cash, the Syrian pro-government militias are better trained and more effective as are the Syrian soldiers. All of these men are paid regularly and most see a better future than do many of the rebel fighters. The Syrian Army is about half its pre-war strength of 300,000 but the remaining troops are loyal and most have combat experience. The army is expanding back to its pre-war strength. This is thanks to cash from Iran, because the Syrian economy is wrecked. In other instances, Iranian interference is not helpful. I n western Afghanistan local (Herat province) police blame Iran for an increase in violence and accuse Iran of funding the local Taliban and providing sanctuary for them in Iran. Performing similar magic in Iraq means shoving corrupt Iraqi officials and officers out of the way and taking care of Iraqi troops with Iranian cash and training these troops using experienced (in that sort of thing) Iranians. This is insulting to many Iraqis, especially senior politicians. But at the moment it is preferable to being murdered by ISIL gunmen.

This entry was posted on September 20, 2014 at 5:44 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.