What's wrong with Iran exporting oil? Why can't Iran export oil? The level of economic strangulation the US can achieve over countries is unprecedented. And they're often just arbitrarily punishing countries.
The sanctions from the US are not arbitrary, it's for a very specific purpose: to force oil-exporting countries to sell their oil in US dollars only. Think about when Iraq decided to sell their oil in euros back in 2000, they got invaded by the US and then quickly switched back to dollars.
I think that aiding in the death of a couple hundred thousand Syrians, having militias in at least 4 ME states, and chanting eternal hostility to US and Israel plays a role. Also putting women in jail for 20 years for refusing to wear hijab is unpopular.
I thought you were talking about the US until I got to “hostility towards US [...]”. Funny.
The US cares about the Syrian deaths about as much as they do about those in Yemen. Morals play absolutely no role here. And when a politician howls something about humanitarian reasons you can be sure it’s a farce.
What matters is giving head to the right person. Do that, and anything is fair game.
It is always bizarre to me that people think of international relations as a sphere in which normal morality operates or should operate. The US does what it thinks is in its strategic interests within the constraints of its power. Iran does the same.
Whether one side or the other has in the past acted immorally is irrelevant. You don't win the argument by saying "America has done bad things too", as if that should persuade it to change its behavior. It's a category error; nothing but ineffectual emotive fluff. You'd have more traction arguing that sanctions are, in fact, not in America's long term best interests.
Indeed. A lot of people tend to have a quite naive view of international relations - and I don’t blame them as media reporting tends to simplify things to a extreme, often trying to identify who is right and who is wrong.
In reality, beneath the surface, is a complex web of relationships and competing/aligned interests.
A good example is the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It may seem like an Israel-Arab conflict, but many Arab countries are aligning with Israel to counter the Shiite threat from Iran. But those same Arab countries can’t abandon the Palestinian cause either. So they walk a tightrope of tacitly supporting Palestine, often hollow public statements about the “on-going fight for a Palestinian state” all the while strategizing with Israel on how to contain Iranian influence. They can’t support Palestine 100% because that would mean severely weakening themselves with regards to Iran.
One can argue that’s two faced and they should be ashamed of partnering with the enemy of a group they support, but in reality every country does it. It’s about practically protecting your interests. And sure you might seem like you flip flop in your statements, but alliances and enemies are created and disappear all the time.
One would hope they'd learned from Iraq and Afghanistan why military invasions aren't the strategically optimal way to deal with these problems. Although that may be a forlorn hope.
As much of a clusterfuck both of those wars were, I don't think they can be shown to have been clearly bad for the US long term interests. It's a hard thing to calculate, and the war hawks would be more than willing to only show the data saying more war is a good strategic idea.
This is what the US does with countries when they won't play ball. Perhaps Iran should've been more grateful when they were freed from the tyranny of Democracy. The US had a lovely dictator picked out just for them.
Iran is not a democracy, candidates at the presidential election in the coming weeks must be approved by a counsel.
The latter doesn't allow liberal candidates, and iranians have lost interest in the coming election because it will keep the Theocracy currently ruling in power.
Also, the supreme leader is at the top of Iran's power structure and is not elected by the iranian population.
The US had no problem with the Shah and have no problem with Saudi Arabia, despite the war in Yemen and the murder of Khashoggi.
The only have a problem if they can't get the oil, ask Mohammad Mosaddegh.
I am not american, and I wish iranians to have the freedom to chose their government. Most of them hate the islamic regime, this is a country with so much potential, ruined by a Theocracy.
The petrodollar depends on it. When we went off the gold standard we "backed" our currency by enforcing that all oil sales be done in USD. This created global demand for dollars and allowed us to maintain our position as the primary reserve currency.
I don't know the history super well but I would speculate that either Iran wanted to sell oil in another currency, or the other oil exporting countries we got in bed with (OPEC) didn't like Iran, or another one of our allies (Israel) didn't like Iran.
To be fair they have kidnapped quite a few British/Iranian citizens including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, they are effectively a religious dictatorship and a majority of their own people hate their government who I think have banned dancing in public and have arrested people for making TikTok videos, amongst more serious crimes. I’m not exactly sure the Iranian government are particularly nice people.
Keep in mind that there is a huge Western media and government bias against Iran, in the US in particular.
I'm not saying the Iranian government doesn't do bad things - it absolutely does, though you could (easily) argue that the US has done far worse. Hell, you can also (again, easily) argue that the US and UK are largely responsible for many of the past wrongs of Iranian governments.
As a singular anecdote from 21 years back, I spent a couple of weeks in Iran way back in 2000 (my father was working there as a geologist for an oil company and I joined him during the summer holidays) - things seemed very different than I'd been led to believe. I felt completely safe wandering Tehran alone, and everyone I came across seemed extremely friendly and curious. They seemed to know how their country was portrayed outside of Iran, and wanted to show me otherwise. People talked freely about politics too, expressing likes and dislikes just like any western nation. And the food, my word the food...
Don’t make the mistake of confusing the position of the people of a country with the position and views of a government/regime.
Iran is a remarkable place with a highly educated population. Of course they’re nice and friendly and curious, most people in most countries are. The Iranian people aren’t the enemy (re: prevailing paradigm of thought from the US), it is the regime. And let’s face it both governments severely dislike each other, the destruction of the US is literally a rallying cry of the Iranian regime
> the destruction of the US is literally a rallying cry of the Iranian regime
Not quite. What they chant is roughly equivalent to "down with". On the other hand, the US has damaged Iran so much that you can't blame them for being very angry at it.
No, US keeps their "special friends" in Guantanamo, keeping US soil clean. That's democracy in action and respect for the constitution, unlike lesser countries.
When the US kidnaps people they call it "extraordinary rendition" so you don't think it's just a simple kidnapping + torture. It's extraordinary somehow.
This article by Nazanin's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, is worth a read. The UK's role is rarely discussed:
"As Iran sentences Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a further two years in Iran, her husband outlines why the UK’s secretive, unaccountable arms trade is a danger to British citizens and why his family remains haunted by an unkept promise made by the UK government."
But why are they a religious dictatorship in the first place?
Khomeini was the reaction to the support of the Shah by western governments.
They replaced one evil with another.
The petrodollar system is why the USD was able to retain status as the international reserve currency even after Bretton Woods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_recycling