08/09/12 – Muhammad Sahimi – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our next guest is Muhammad Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering and material science.
And the NIOC chair in petroleum engineering at USC.
And is the lead political columnist for PBS's Tehran Bureau.
Geez, I didn't know that.
Here he is writing again for antiwar.com.
Sanctions will kill tens of thousands of Iranians.
By Muhammad Sahimi.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Good talking to you, Scott.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
It's an unfortunate occasion.
But it's a very important piece of journalism that you got here.
I hope people take a look at it and pass it around.
Sanctions will kill tens of thousands of Iranians.
But I saw on TV, the Democrats are very, very caring people.
And the sanctions that they put on Iran are just sanctions on Iranian bad guys.
And so, what are you talking about?
Well, when they started talking about imposing sanctions on Iran, what they were saying was that these sanctions will be smart and it will be targeted.
Meaning that they would only target those Iranian entities that supposedly help Iran's nuclear program.
But then, what they imposed was far more reaching than what they were talking about.
In particular, what they have been doing is imposing sanctions on Iran's central bank and almost all other major Iranian banks that are involved with commerce with outside world.
What it means is that Iran cannot import a lot of stuff and products and goods that common ordinary people need.
And therefore, although, for example, let's say importing product X or Y is not sanctioned, but because of the sanctions on Iranian financial institutions and banks, importing them has become practically impossible.
And that has hurt, in addition to all other things, millions of Iranian people, ordinary Iranian people, who are going about their daily lives and have nothing to do with the political aspect of the, excuse me, confrontation between Iran and the United States.
Now, one of the areas that has been really hot heat, and I discussed it in the article, is the pharmaceutical section.
What we have here is that Iran is not able to import advanced medications and drugs for serious diseases, such as cancer, heart diseases, lung diseases, thalassemia, and multiple sclerosis, and other types of debilitating illnesses, that if they are not taken care of with these advanced medications, the patients will die.
In particular, for example, Iran has tens of thousands of young men and boys that are hemophilic, which means that once they start bleeding, the bleeding cannot be stopped easily.
And therefore, they need these medications in order to be taken care of.
And in particular, a lot of these young men and boys, for example, may need surgeries for other problems that they have.
But because of the fact that they are hemophilic, and if their surgery starts and the bleeding doesn't stop, the surgery cannot be performed.
And in fact, according to the report that I have seen in Iranian press, all the surgeries for such patients have been canceled.
In Iran, there are also large cases of cancer every year, every year, according to official statistics, at least 40,000 Iranian patients die of cancer.
And the number of cancer cases has been increasing rapidly, partly because of the pollution problem that Iran has been dealing with.
And every year, up to 80,000 new cases have been identified.
And some Iranian medical experts have predicted that Iran will have sort of a cancer tsunami by 2015 or maybe a little later, whereby the country will be overwhelmed with the cases of cancer that it has to deal with.
And if the sanctions on Iran is going to drag on for years, as it happened during the Iraqi crisis in the 1990s, where complete sanctions were imposed on Iraq, Iran may be in a far worse situation than Iraq was in that era, simply because Iran's population is three times larger than Iraq.
Iran's population has exceeded 76 million, according to the latest statistics.
And therefore, we will have a far larger human catastrophe in our hands than we did in Iraq in the 1990s.
And this is just one aspect of the sanctions that have been imposed on Iran.
And nobody talks about it, but this has become, you know, it's reaching the level of a very deep crisis in Iran.
And as I mentioned in my article, I have actually been able to personally confirm these reports, because two of my brother-in-laws are actually pharmacists, and they run a large pharmacy in Iran.
And they told me that they are dealing with a grave shortage of a lot of medications that people need.
I know cases, for example, that people want to treat their cancer through chemotherapy, but the medications that are used, the chemicals that are used in chemotherapy, cannot be found in Iran, simply because Iran is not able to import them.
But there is also another aspect of this, and that aspect has to deal with the oil sanctions.
Because the oil sanctions have been tightening, Iran has been losing its earnings through oil exports.
And as the oil earnings go down, Iran's financial resources become totally strained, and that becomes another factor, because not only Iran will not be able to import very expensive, advanced medication and drugs for its patients, even if it could, there are other shortages that are emerging on the horizon.
From my conversation with many people inside Iran, I understand that up until a while ago, several months ago, the fear that Iranian people had was the fear of war and an attack by Israel or the United States.
But now that fear has also been compounded by the fear of shortages of everything, from foodstuff to everything else that some of it Iran has to import.
So these are the human toll of the sanctions that have been imposed on Iran.
But the picture that is presented of Iran's sanctions in the United States is that these sanctions are targeted, they are smart, and they are meant only to pressure the Iranian military, and in particular the Revolutionary Guards, that are supposedly leading Iran's nuclear program.
All right, now, Mohammed, quite a few things to follow up on there.
First of all, it occurs to me that maybe someone from the war party listening might, you know, in order to justify their own attitudes, might try to jump to the conclusion that you're only referring to things like 20% enriched uranium, something like that, for cancer treatment.
But it doesn't sound to me like that's what you're talking about.
You're talking about wide and varied classes of drugs for reasons I'm not sure.
And after all, they got all the 20% enriched uranium in the world that they want, because America and Israel sabotaged the offer in 2009 to have all of their enrichment limited to 3.6%.
This is totally correct.
I'm not talking about medical isotope that is produced by Tehran Research Reactor.
And that also, Iran also needs that, because it's used for close to 800,000 Iranian patients in their medical treatment.
And as you pointed out, there was a deal that's sabotaged by the United States and Israel.
At that time, Iran said that if the West and the IAEA are willing to supply Iran with fuel for Tehran Research Reactor, which is used for producing these isotopes, Iran will not try to produce the enriched uranium at that level.
I'm sorry to interrupt right here.
It's a very awkward place to do it, but we've got to go out to this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Mohamed Sahimi from USC and PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau on antiwar.com right after this.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Mohamed Sahimi.
He's an Iranian expat and professor at University of Southern California there in L.A.
And he writes at PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau and for antiwar.com.
This one is called Sanctions Will Kill Tens of Thousands of Iranians.
And we're just starting to follow up on the questions about the pharmaceutical industry falling under America's sanctions here.
And the severe effect it's already having on the civilian population of that country.
And so I was just clarifying because I think there was room for assumption in what you said, Mohamed, that, oh, well, you know, he's just complaining about uranium, whatever, whatever.
Well, they got more 20% enriched uranium than ever before.
That's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about whatever other chemicals used for chemotherapy and all kinds of other drugs and treatments, apparently, have been banned by the sanctions.
How in the world is that?
Is that really right?
They're just outright banning medicine?
Or they're claiming everything is some kind of dual use precursor to a weapon of mass destruction or what?
Well, they haven't actually said that Iran cannot import these chemicals or drugs and medications.
But what they have done is imposing sanctions on all Iranian banks that are involved with commerce with the outside world.
When any entity within Iran or any country wants to import some goods and products from another country, these banks open line of credit, provide guarantee that, you know, the payment will be made and so on.
But because Iran's central bank, which has a prime role in all of these transactions, and other major Iranian banks that open line of credit and so on have been banned, have been sanctioned, there is no way to open line of credit and provide a guarantee.
And therefore, in practice, the imports of these medications and chemicals that are used for, you know, treating all sorts of diseases in Iran has become impossible, even though the drugs and medications themselves are not on the official list of sanctions material.
So these are the indirect effects of sanctioning Iran's central bank and other financial institutions, which I must point out that it is unprecedented.
I mean, this is the first time, as far as I know in the history, that the central bank of a country has been sanctioned by another country, and in particular the United States.
And that has made everything very difficult in Iran.
Iran imports part of the food that the population consumes from outside world.
For example, it imports some wheat and rice and flour.
And that has become very difficult.
Iran, as we've been discussing, imports medications and other things.
Iran imports raw materials for its industry.
All of these have been greatly pressured and influenced by the sanctions on Iranian financial institutions.
As I pointed out in my article, the board of directors of Society of Hemophilic People in Iran wrote a letter to the International Federation of Hemophilia asking them to help because they cannot import medication for tens of thousands of young men and boys that are afflicted with this disease in Iran.
And the lives of many of them are in danger, not only because they don't have the medication for hemophilic disease, but also because they also need surgeries for other things.
But a hemophilic patient, if he starts bleeding, the bleeding cannot be stopped without these advanced medications, cannot have any type of surgery.
So that's the problem that has been caused by the indirect effect of sanctions on Iranian financial institutions.
This is not the same as you pointed out, and I'm happy you did because it was very timely.
This is not the same as the medical isotope that Tehran Research Reactor produces every year for 850,000 Iranian patients.
Although even in that case, we know that in October of 2009, Iran reached an agreement with the IAEA and the West to receive fuel for Tehran Research Reactor.
But due to differences, the agreement was basically sabotaged.
And then at that time, Iran said that if the IAEA, which according to its own status, must provide Iran with fuel for a research reactor, refuses to do so, Iran will take action to produce its own enriched uranium for fuel for Tehran Research Reactor.
At that time, Israel and the United States did not believe that Iran actually could do it.
But Iran went ahead and redesigned its enrichment facilities.
And in fact, the guy who did the redesigning of the enrichment facilities so that Iran could produce enriched uranium at 19.75% as fuel for Tehran Research Reactor was the Iranian scientist Dr. Majid Chahriari, who did all the calculations and redesigning.
And then he was assassinated in the summer of 2010 by what is widely attributed to Israel and MEK agents within Iran.
So Iran has produced enough fuel for Tehran Research Reactor.
So that's not what you're talking about.
You're talking about ordinary chemicals, drugs, medications, food and stuff, and that type of thing that have been greatly affected by the sanctions on Iranian financial institutions.
All right.
Now, when it comes to the sanctions on Iranian oil, I think my understanding was that America has had sanctions on Iranian oil all through the 1990s and since forever, maybe before that.
I don't know exactly the extent of it or what, but I keep hearing, at least from time to time, that when it comes to sanctions on Iranian oil, that it only ever benefits the Ayatollah and his personal army, which I guess is separate really, sort of the Gestapo separate from the rest of the army, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, because they're the ones who run all the oil black markets out of Iran.
Oh, that's nonsense.
I mean, there is no question that in Iran, like any other country, there is financial corruption, there are all sorts of things that happen everywhere.
But the fact of the matter is, a large portion of Iran's earnings from oil exports is used to import everyday materials for the consumption of Iranian people.
That's the problem.
Iran made last year about $90 billion from its oil exports, and according to government statistics, about $60 billion of it was used for importing raw materials, spare parts for industrial complexes, food, and other things.
So at least two-thirds of the oil income was used for these purposes.
Of course, part of it also is used in the national budget, and part of it is also used for Iranian military, because every country has a defense budget, and everybody has some defense needs.
This is not to say that some of it is not wasted.
Of course, as I said, in any country, particularly in Iran, which is not really a democratic country, there are ways, there are corruptions, and so on.
But to say that, you know, if we prevent Iran from exporting its oil, it only hurts the Ayatollah and his army, that's total nonsense.
In fact, one of the goals of today's article on antiwar.com is exactly to show the opposite, that these types of sanctions are hurting not just the Ayatollah and his revolutionary guards, but millions of ordinary Iranian people.
And people, the mainstream media in this country is not willing to talk about these issues, because if they do, then the bankruptcy of these types of sanctions will be totally revealed.
And of course, certain corners in this country, the neocons, the Israel lobby, the war party, and so on, they don't want people to be informed about the catastrophic effect of some sanctions, such sanctions on Iranian people.
The same way that we didn't know about the extent of the effect of the complete sanctions on Iraqi people in the 1990s, until, for example, an official of UNICEF, the United Nations organization, came out and said that the sanctions have killed 500,000 Iraqi children due to malnutrition and other effects.
So, it is totally nonsense to say that, well, these oil exports only benefit the Ayatollah and his military.
This is just total nonsense.
Well, actually, I think you misunderstood my question.
I'm sure that was my fault, because I didn't say it very well.
But, already you've agreed to stay one more segment, thank goodness.
So, we'll straighten that out when we get back from this break.
Sorry, I misunderstood.
No, no, no, it's alright.
I'm sure it was my fault.
He's writing today on Antiwar.com, sanctions will kill tens of thousands of Iranians.
And we'll be back after this.
Alright, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Mohammad Sahimi from PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau and Antiwar.com, where he's got a piece today, sanctions will kill tens of thousands of Iranians by Mohammad Sahimi.
So, even though I'm a radio show host, and you would think that that would require that I know how to use the English language, it really does not.
It hasn't so far anyway.
So, I asked a question, but I didn't ask it very well, and I believe there was a misunderstanding.
You thought that what I was saying, Mohammad, was, well, the only people who ever profit from oil sales in Iran is the IRGC.
So, if we sanction oil, screw them anyway, who cares, because what other effect does it have?
But, actually, what I was getting at was that my understanding is the black market in oil is controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps there.
And so, when we sanction all of the regular open market oil trades, and we force all that oil through the black market, then the Ayatollah's personal Gestapo are the ones who benefit from it, rather than, as you cited, the litany of ways that the regular Iranian people benefit from these oil sales, the food and all of that.
That is totally correct, and I'm sorry I misunderstood your question.
No, no, no, I didn't ask it right.
I take full responsibility for the miscommunication on that one.
But, please address the black market in oil and how that works with the IGRC there.
It is true.
In fact, there were reports in Iranian press that, because of the sanctions, the national Iranian oil company is going to try to sell its oil through what it calls private companies.
But, in Iran, there are no private companies that can sell oil.
So, what they are is that these are companies that are linked with top commanders of Iranian Revolutionary Guards and people that are linked with them.
So, what happens is that, as you pointed out, they are the ones who will benefit from sanctions, Iranian oil, and not allowing it to be sold by the national Iranian oil company through the regular channels.
So, on the one hand, we are harming the lives of millions of ordinary Iranian people by trying to choking off Iran's oil earnings.
And, on the other hand, we are enriching a few or a very small group of hardliners in Iran that benefit from these black markets for oil and natural gas that Iran exports.
And, therefore, these sanctions, not only they don't have the intended effect, even if we assume that everything is legal and everything is proper, but also they have the opposite effect.
They are enriching, like you said, the Gestapo of the regime, but at the same time harming millions of ordinary Iranian people by denying them a lot of things that Iran needs to import, from foodstuff to medications to raw materials for industrial plants and so on and so forth.
That's what I love about the American government.
Everything that they do is so horrible that it always, like everything they do, begs the question, is it stupidity or a nefarious conspiracy?
Are they actually just working to marginalize any moderate force in Iran and go ahead and benefit the IRGC that they are claiming to target?
Or are they just the most incompetent imperialists in the history of mankind, where their entire program does nothing but benefit the exact people they claim they are trying to destroy with them?
Well, in my view, the War Party, the Israel lobby, and neocons don't want to have any moderate voice within Iran.
As I pointed out in my article, there are moderate voices in Iran that have called on the Iranian government to be more flexible in its dealing with the West over Iran's nuclear program.
But when such harsh sanctions are imposed on Iran, those moderate voices cannot be very loud because the government uses these sanctions as an excuse to clamp down on any moderate voice under the guise of the threat to Iranian national security.
I published a detailed analysis of why the Moscow negotiations between Iran and P5-plus-1 failed.
And one of the reasons, in my view, it failed was because the United States had moved the red line and was not willing to offer Iran anything tangible in return for asking Iran to give up a big part of its bargaining cards, namely enrichment, the ability to enrichment at 19.75%, and the Fordov facility which is built under a mountain and cannot be destroyed by bombing it.
I'm sorry, because that point is so very important, how intransigent America has been.
Here we have meetings, and then we walk into the meeting saying that nothing you can do will ever be good enough for us and demanding an offer they can't possibly accept.
But we've got to leave that point for a second because I want to get back to the effect of the population on sanctions.
We have very little time, but I want to reinforce a point that you made earlier about your comparison to the 1990s era sanctions on Iraq.
And now at that time it was a complete UN Security Council thing, so Russia and China were in on it too.
It was the whole world versus Iraq under that UN Security Council mandate.
Whereas in this case, that's not the case on at least many of these sanctions.
Russia and China at least have exemptions, or they're ignoring them altogether.
They're not in on them in the first place.
So Iran does have that going for them as opposed to the Iraqi situation.
But as you pointed out, and I think very importantly, Iran has a much larger population of Iraq.
It just comes down to the number of individuals who will die of, say for example, bad nutrition, easily curable diseases and other circumstances, or just a lack of distribution of medicines and food and things that people need to survive and the destruction of the economy in general.
You could well have as many Iranians die in this regime of sanctions, even without any further war than just the MEK assassinating people sometimes.
And it could be just as bad at least as what happened in Iraq in the 1990s, where at least somewhere right around a million people died, half of them children.
Oh, I totally agree.
And you have to remember, the sanctions that have been imposed on Iran by the United Nations Security Council are actually quite mild.
Most of those sanctions have targeted individuals within Iran's power hierarchy, Iran's military, and some research entities.
But these sanctions that are hurting Iranian people are unilateral sanctions, also United Nations Security Council imposed by the United States and its European allies.
The European allies of the United States go along with these sanctions simply because they think that if they don't go along with it, then the U.S. will attack Iran, and they don't want that to happen.
And the United States always moves its red line regarding Iran's nuclear program.
Before the negotiations started in April, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that the United States' red line is that Iran should not make nuclear weapons.
And according to him and other high officials of the administration, Iran hasn't made nuclear weapons, is not making nuclear weapons, and hasn't made the decision to go forward and make nuclear weapons.
If that was a true red line, then everything was negotiable, because what Iran wants is to have the right to enrich uranium under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
But then when P5-plus-1 showed up in Istanbul and then Baghdad and then Moscow, the red line had moved.
They wanted Iran to give up basically most of its nuclear program in return for nothing.
In return, the United States had agreed that it would supply, for example, spare parts for all civilian airliners that Iran had bought from the United States and Europe a couple of decades ago.
But this is already part of obligations of the United States towards any nation to which it sells civilian aircraft.
This is not a concession of any sort.
But in the meantime, what has happened is that because these negotiations failed, because of the fact that the red line has moved, the sanctions have been tightened.
And as a result of tightening the sanctions, it is the Iranian people who are paying for the policy of the United States.
They don't want any moderate force in Iran to raise their voice, because if they do want to have these moderate voices raise their voice, they would offer some concessions to the Iranian government.
For example, they would say that, you know, we lift some of these sanctions.
I'm not asking for lifting all the sanctions, although I believe all of them are illegal.
But they could offer lifting of some of the sanctions so that those moderate, pragmatic voices within Iran could point to these concessions and make their voice louder and stronger.
But they didn't do that.
And under the tough conditions that they have imposed on Iran, even moderate voices dare not to say anything, because they know what the difficulty of the situation is right now.
All right.
Well, we're already over time.
I'm sorry we have to leave it there.
But I thank you very much for your time on the show, Mohamed, and for all your great work.
I hope that people will read this one and pass it around.
I don't know.
I don't think it's too late for something to be done about it before the worst consequences start kicking in here.
So, you know, the sooner the better here.
Sanctions will kill tens of thousands of Iranians by Mohamed Zahimi.
It's at Antiwar.com today.
Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you very much, Scott.
All right, so we'll be right back after this.