\tUn d\u00e9bat a eu lieu sur le site Huffington Post<\/em>, notamment entre Flynt Leverett, qu’on a d\u00e9j\u00e0 souvent cit\u00e9, et le pr\u00e9sident du National Iranian American Council (NIAC) Trita Parsi, sur l’efficacit\u00e9 des sanctions contre l’Iran. (Un autre participant \u00e9tait le journaliste danois Sune Engel Rasmussen, qui a effectu\u00e9 plusieurs s\u00e9jours en Iran.) Le site des \u00e9poux Leverett, Going To Tegeran<\/em>, a publi\u00e9 le 17 avril 2013<\/a> un compte-rendu de ce d\u00e9bat. Essentiellement, Trita Parsi plaidait pour l’efficacit\u00e9 de ces sanctions, tandis que Leverett tenait la position exactement inverse. (On a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu des d\u00e9veloppements sur cette position des \u00e9poux Leverett, le 27 f\u00e9vrier 2013<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tDivers points concernant les sanctions sont ainsi d\u00e9battus, et certains apportant une lumi\u00e8re nouvelle sur la situation et les effets de ces sanctions. Il y a un tableau g\u00e9n\u00e9ral de la situation en Iran, notamment confirm\u00e9 par Rasmussen, qui renforce la th\u00e8se selon laquelle l’Iran r\u00e9siste remarquablement \u00e0 ces sanctions, au niveau de l’\u00e9conomie en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et du climat existant dans le pays. Deux points pr\u00e9cis sont particuli\u00e8rement int\u00e9ressants.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t Le premier concerne le situation de l’Iran apr\u00e8s la d\u00e9valuation du riyal, qui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9crite par les commentateurs-Syst\u00e8me comme particuli\u00e8rement catastrophique pour l’Iran. Leverett assure du contraire, mettant en \u00e9vidence que cette d\u00e9valuation, que les dirigeants iraniens ont toujours repouss\u00e9e alors qu’elle implique un ajustement \u00e0 la valeur r\u00e9elle de la monnaie, a permis \u00e0 l’Iran de devenir extr\u00eamement comp\u00e9titif sur le march\u00e9 de l’exportation du p\u00e9trole (processus parall\u00e8le \u00e0 l’effet attendu pour les pays europ\u00e9ens en crise, qui quitteraient l’euro et reviendraient \u00e0 leurs monnaies nationales en la d\u00e9valuant). D’un point de vue plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, selon Leverett, la d\u00e9valuation permet \u00e0 l’Iran de couvrir 50 \u00e0 60% de ses importations avec l’argent r\u00e9cup\u00e9r\u00e9 de ses exportations autres que le p\u00e9trole.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t Le second concerne la confirmation d’une situation singuli\u00e8re des USA. A cause de l’extraordinaire imbroglio l\u00e9gislatif des sanctions contre l’Iran, qui s’accumulent depuis trente ans, sous la forme de d\u00e9cisions de politique g\u00e9n\u00e9rale qui sont ensuite transform\u00e9es en lois, les USA sont totalement impuissants pour se d\u00e9gager du r\u00e9gime des sanctions qu’ils ont eux-m\u00eames institu\u00e9. Les diverses conditions exig\u00e9es de l’Iran pour la lev\u00e9e des sanctions, qui sont devenues des lois US, sont telles qu’il est tout simplement impensable que l’Iran, quel que soit son r\u00e9gime ou son gouvernement, y souscrive, voire tout simplement qu’il parvienne \u00e0 y satisfaire. Ainsi l’argument diplomatique des sanctions (lev\u00e9e des sanctions si l’Iran r\u00e9duit ou abandonne son programme nucl\u00e9aire selon les exigences des USA\/du le bloc BAO) est compl\u00e8tement impotent et sans la moindre r\u00e9alit\u00e9. Le pr\u00e9sident Obama, s’il le voulait, ne pourrait certainement pas lever les sanctions contre l’Iran en cas d’accord g\u00e9n\u00e9ral sur le nucl\u00e9aire. Les USA sont compl\u00e8tement prisonniers de l’appareil l\u00e9gislatif qui s’est mis en place au long des ann\u00e9es, essentiellement par simple automatisme bureaucratique, et d’une fa\u00e7on g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, plus emprisonn\u00e9s par la crise iranienne quez l’Iran lui-m\u00eame. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00ab… More specifically, Flynt pushed back against Trita’s argument that, while sanctions have put a tremendous amount of pressure on [the Iranian] economy, they have not changed the calculus of the Tehran regime on the nuclear issue, because Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has a strong and dominant narrative that depicts the West as being invariably against Iran’s development, that this is actually not about the nuclear programit’s about the West trying to subdue Iran, making it dependent. For sanctions to alter Tehran’s nuclear calculus, Parsi holds, the Obama administration needs to shape a countervailing narrative to this.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbResponding to this argument, Flynt notes, Trita has framed it in terms of the Supreme Leader having a narrative’ about what sanctions say about U.S. intentions toward Iran and that there needs to be some sort of countervailing narrative. In fact, there’s not a countervailing narrative because, in many ways, the Supreme Leader’s narrative about the nuclear issue and about America’s ultimate intentions toward the Islamic Republic<\/em> [is<\/em>] not wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe Supreme Leader has said, just within the last couple of weeks,<\/em> if the United States wants a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue, it’s very easy: recognize Iran’s right to safeguarded enrichment, stop trying to get them to suspend, stop trying to get them to go to zero enrichment and we can have a nuclear deal. But the Obama administration, even though it’s had multiple opportunities to make clear that that’s where it wants to go, refuses to do that. Its stated position is it still wants to get Iran to a full suspensionstop enriching uranium.<\/em><\/strong> And as long as that’s the case, there is no countervailing narrative that can be had; the Supreme Leader’s narrative is actually validated.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbFlynt goes on to underscore that<\/em> the way the sanctions have been drawn up, and the fact that whereas even just a few years ago, most of them were imposed by executive orders (which are more or less at the discretion of the White House), but now most of the sanctions have been written into law, belies the proposition that sanctions are somehow intended to promote a diplomatic solution:<\/em><\/strong> If you actually look at the language in the billsthat these are the conditions Iran would have to meet in order for the President to be able to say we’ve satisfied these conditions and I’m therefore lifting sanctions’<\/em> the Islamic Republic could allow the U.S. government to come in, dismantle every centrifuge in Iran, cart them back to<\/em><\/strong> [the U.S. nuclear laboratory at<\/em><\/strong>] Oak Ridge (like Qadhafi in Libya did), and there would still not be a legal basis for lifting the sanctions.<\/em><\/strong> [The Iranians would also<\/em>] have to stop talking to, dealing with groups like Hizballah and Hamas, that we want to call terrorist groups, and they basically have to turn themselves into a secular liberal democracy in order to meet our standards on human rights.’ The President can’t lift them, even if the Iranians surrender to him on the nuclear issue. So<\/em> the idea that this is somehow meant to encourage a diplomatic outcomethat’s just not real.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbWith regard to the impact of sanctions, another HuffPost Live panelistSune Engel Rasmussen, a Danish journalist who has reported from Tehranpoints out that, in living standards, Iran is not a developing country, and it’s a lot more affluent than many of the neighboring countriesIf you were in Tehran for a week, for example, except when you changed your money you might not get a sense of this insane inflation. Because you still have big billboards advertising clothes stores, you still have a lot of cars in the streets, people are still shopping, you still have people drinking three or four dollar cappuccinos in north Tehran. That doesn’t mean the average Iranian is not sufferingBut then when you talk about whether that leads to civil unrest, for example, then we also have to remember that many Iranians still remember an eight-year war with Iraq, when they were living on food stamps. So they’ve seen a lot more suffering than they’re seeing now.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbPicking up on Sune’s observations, Flynt elaborates on the impact of sanctionsincluding their indirect contribution to Iranian economic reform: Anyone who has been in Tehran recently, you can talk to people and definitely get a sense of how sanctions are making daily life harder for more and more people. But the idea that the economy is collapsing is just not borne out by on-the-ground reality.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIt’s also worth pointing outand I’ve had any number of Iranians, official and otherwise, say this to methat<\/em> sanctions, in some ways, actually help Iran, in that they give the government a kind of political cover to take some steps toward what you might call economic reform, that would be politically difficult otherwiseIran has done more to expand non-oil exports, it is less dependent on oil revenues for both its government budget and to cover its imports, than any other major oil-exporting country in the Middle East. It has done far more in that kind of diversification than Saudi Arabia or any of the states on the other side of the Persian Gulf<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb[Take<\/em>] the issue of the devaluation of the currency:<\/em> the Iranian riyal has been overvalued for at least a decade, but no Iranian government has been able or willing actually to let the riyal come back to something like its natural value. Now, because of sanctions, this has happened. And as a result, Iran’s non-oil exports have become much more competitive, and are growing. In percentage terms, they can now cover 50-60 percent of their imports with non-oil exports.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbFinally, on the question of whether sanctions amount to economic war against Iran, Flynt says,<\/em> We’re at war, and it’s not just an economic war. We’re engaged in cyber-attacks against high-value Iranian targets, we’re sponsoring covert operations by groups inside Iran that, in any other country in the world, we would call terrorist operations.<\/em><\/strong> We are definitely waging war against the Islamic Republic.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n dedefensa.org<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" L’\u00e9trange chaos des sanctions contre l’Iran Un d\u00e9bat a eu lieu sur le site Huffington Post, notamment entre Flynt Leverett, qu’on a d\u00e9j\u00e0 souvent cit\u00e9, et le pr\u00e9sident du National Iranian American Council (NIAC) Trita Parsi, sur l’efficacit\u00e9 des sanctions contre l’Iran. (Un autre participant \u00e9tait le journaliste danois Sune Engel Rasmussen, qui a effectu\u00e9… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[12103,2773,6463,3600,12104,5646,9633],"class_list":["post-74944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-devaluation","tag-iran","tag-leverett","tag-petrole","tag-riyal","tag-sanctions","tag-tarsi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}