Iran "Ransom" Scandal Is Back...and It's Still Nonsense

The purported Iran "ransom" scandal is back in the news after the State Department confirmed that it didn't allow Iran to take possession of the cash until the release of the American prisoners was confirmed. The State Department called it "leverage" while anyone looking for a reason to disparage Iran or President Obama calls it "ransom". The question is who is right?

When this story first broke, we argued that the whole issue was much ado about the nothing. In spite of the latest news, that assessment still stands.

To see why, first it is important to clarify the definition of ransom. Wikipedia uses the following definition, which seems appropriate: “Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release.”

Assuming the payment of $400 million was a prerequisite for the prisoner exchange to occur, as it now appears, a very narrow interpretation of the facts would call it either ransom or a bribe. Arguably, since prisoners were released on both sides rather than just from Iran, the payment would be more of a bribe to ensure the transaction took place. However, given that bribing a foreign government and paying ransom to it, are similarly blameworthy, this distinction is not critical. What matters is whether the payment truly constituted either in any meaningful sense. I would argue it does not.

The reason is that the US already acknowledged that it owed this money (and more) to Iran. This is critical. The connotation of ransom is that the kidnappers are trying to get money that does not otherwise belong to them, thus making it akin to theft. Obviously, the average criminal doesn’t kidnap for the purpose of trying to collect a legal debt that already exists. That would be absurd.

When I make my mortgage payment to US Bank, I’m not being extorted. It’s true that if I did not pay, they could eventually foreclose on the house and evict me. However, we don’t consider it extortion because there was a debt involved. Meanwhile, if criminals threatened to seize my house unless I paid them, this clearly would be extortion. The question of whether a debt existed beforehand is fundamental. And just as we don’t think it’s extortion when a legal debt is involved, it seems we shouldn’t think of it as ransom if the payment in question is, in fact, a repayment of funds that were already owed.

Based on this, one of two conclusions on the latest Iran scandal could be warranted. If one believes the debt involved to be legitimate, then the Obama Administration’s actions in the negotiations itself are not problematic. The US paid a debt that was owed; a prisoner swap ensued; and two longstanding issues that inspired hostility on both sides of the relationship—and thereby increased the chance for another needless war—have now been put to rest.

Alternatively, if one believes the debt in question is not legitimate and the US government did not owe any money to Iran, then the Obama Administration’s settlement is a problem, and constitutes either a bribe or ransom. In this case, the entire $1.7B that the US agreed to pay should be the amount that we object to. Unless we assume the US government will shirk on the unpaid balance, there is no reason to be up in arms exclusively about the $400 million paid in January.

If there’s an argument to be made about why the US did not owe Iran any money related to the old contract, then let’s hear it. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand why this should be a big scandal. Surely, the circumstances of the payment were cartoonishly suspicious (literally, flown-by-night), and the Obama Administration's shifting position on the story looks like a scandal--first, the negotiations on the debt and the prisoners were totally separate, and now we know there was some overlap. But the Obama Administration's failure to stick with a single version of events over the past few weeks does not change the facts of the underlying story. And that story is not a scandal; it is, instead, a very rare instance of diplomacy being used in the Obama years instead of coercion.

Also, it’s also worth noting that the $1.7B settlement is not a new story. The Wall Street Journal is (understandably) trying to play up the importance of their reporting, but all that’s new here is the timing and form of the payment—not that payments were going to be made. The settlement itself was widely reported back in January. So again, if we’re going to object, it seems like we should have been objecting to it in January, when the US agreed to pay the money, not just now that we learned some of the money was actually paid.

If you're a libertarian or someone else who supports peace, the knee-jerk criticism of the Obama Administration is somewhat understandable. It stems from a bias I share—namely, that if the Obama Administration did it, it’s probably awful. This bias has proven to be an extraordinarily reliable predictor in foreign policy over the past eight years, but it’s not right all of the time. And Iran is one of the cases where it's wrong.

Indeed, the Iran nuclear deal, and the side deals at issue here, is essentially the only significant foreign policy action President Obama undertook that moved the US closer to peace. US policies elsewhere in the region were an utter disaster for peace--a disaster that is still playing out to this day, in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, to name just a few. But Iran is the one issue he ultimately helped improve. And he deserves credit for that, just as surely as he deserves to be impeached for overthrowing a sovereign government in Libya.

The point here is that there are plenty of legitimate and well-founded reasons to criticize President Obama. There is absolutely no need to manufacture scandals. 

Did the US Make 'Ransom Payments' to Iran? No, Of Course Not.

Just in time for Throwback Thursday, there is a fresh new Iran scandal dominating the news. And like most Iran scandals, the latest is much ado about nothing. It's not even a new event; just new details on something that happened nearly seven months ago.

The long and short of it goes something like this: As the Iran Deal neared implementation this past January, two officially unrelated events occurred around the same time. The US paid Iran $400 million and Iran released four American prisoners. Based on this timing, and because many powerful Americans love to hate Iran, this is being framed as a kind of ransom payment.

Lost in the shuffle, however, is the seemingly important fact that this $400 million belonged to Iran in the first place. In fact, the reputed ransom payment was basically a matter of the US returning stolen property. As CNN notes, the pre-revolution Iranian government moved $400 million to the US to pay for an arms deal. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, that deal fell through, the arms were not delivered, and the US government refused to return the money. Around the same time as the Iran Deal negotiations, however, the US agreed to return this money, as well as $1.3 billion in interest.

While some could quibble about the interest calculations, these broad facts aren't really disputed. And it seems that no one could legitimately argue that the Iranian government's transition from (American-backed) dictatorship to an independent quasi-representative theocracy justifies the transfer of all Iranian government property and assets to whatever country happened to have jurisdiction over them at the time.

This is an important distinction because it was one of the major talking points over the Iran Deal generally. Opponents of the deal criticized it for "giving" billions of dollars to Iran, which might then be used to sponsor terrorism (which in the present context, largely means backing Hezbollah against Al Qaeda in Syria, but I digress). In the same way, many of those critics call the $400 million a ransom payment. In both cases, the implication is that Iran is gaining resources it had no legitimate claim to beforehand; and in both cases, it is wrong. The US (and its partners, presumably) has impounded vast amounts of Iranian assets since the Iranian Revolution, and the deal was simply designed to restore Iran's access to those resources.

To see why it is appropriate for Iran to get this money back, a quick thought experiment is in order. Imagine, as happened to me recently, that your car gets towed for (allegedly) being parked illegally. When you go to the towing lot and get the car back, you don't thank the towing company for giving you a car. It was always your car, and it still is; they just took it for a while. To believe otherwise is patently absurd. And yet, it is exactly what many of the critics of the Iran Deal are essentially arguing--that impounding someone's (or some country's) assets nullifies their property rights to those assets.

Note that it doesn't ultimately matter whether you actually parked illegally or just happen to live among vengeful neighbors with too much free time on their hands. If you did something illegal, you may be required to pay fines, but your underlying ownership of the car does not evaporate. So too, it doesn't matter whether you think Iran has been a perfect member of the international community since 1979; any transgressions or treaty violations they may have committed could open them up for penalties, trade wars, etc., not wholesale confiscation of their assets in foreign countries.

Back to the story of alleged ransom payments, we now see how mundane and uncontroversial it ought to be. The US returned money to Iran that it wrongly confiscated after 1979; and Iran released prisoners that were wrongly imprisoned. On the surface, this appears to be perfectly desirable on both counts; indeed it may be that rare instance of actual diplomacy being used by the US government in the 21st century.

In modern political discourse, that constitutes a lurid scandal of the highest order. Launching wars without Congressional approval, torture, and a global assassination program can all be tolerated, but diplomacy is beyond the pale.

Defense Contractor Lobbies for... Peace and Trade?

A wonderful and surprising thing happened this week. The US-based Boeing Company signed a deal with Iran Air to sell up to $25 billion worth of new commercial airplanes.

Assuming you're not a shareholder of Boeing or a customer of Iran Air, it might not be immediately clear why this is big news. And in an ideal world, it wouldn't be. US companies would be able to trade freely with Iranian companies, and every new business deal would be entirely mundane. In the world we actually live in, however, this deal is nothing short of groundbreaking. It has major implications in both practical and symbolic ways.

Practical Implications
Starting first with the practical effects, Iran has been suffering under US and/or international sanctions to some extent dating back to 1979,* shortly after the Iranian Revolution overthrew the US-backed dictator there. Since that time, each successive US president, save George Bush Sr., has managed to tighten the sanctions regime. Despite failing to produce any positive political effects, the sanctions regime has had many negative effects for the Iranian economy over the years. One of the more acute, and obscure, consequences came from Iranian companies' inability to import new civilian airplanes or import spare parts to maintain their existing fleet. The result is that Iran's commercial aircraft are considerably less reliable and safe, on average, than the rest of the world's.

While very specific, this problem makes perfect sense from an economic perspective. Airplanes represent a very complex and specialized product, as well as a considerable amount of capital. There's no reason that an Iranian entrepreneur couldn't start an airplane or spare parts manufacturing business. But their ability to be successful in a such a specialized industry is limited by the size of the market.

An Economics Tangent
To see a more tangible example of this principle at work, think of the rise of specialty online retailers. And in particular, we'll use the not-entirely-random case of vegan shoes. Before the Internet and e-commerce had taken off, there were probably about as many vegans as there are today. And if you're vegan, especially if you're a guy, the prospect of finding a good vegan (non-leather) pair of dress shoes is a daunting one. It basically comes down to a tradeoff between principle and pain. You could buy high-end dress shoes that were fashionable and comfortable, but you'd have to compromise on principle because they would invariably be made of leather. Or you could find cheap dress shoes that were vegan by accident to make them cheap, but these would typically look terrible and feel even worse. I surely was not the only one confronted with this dilemma, and yet, my moderately-sized hometown of Boise, Idaho did not have a single vegan shoe store. It was outrageous, I assure you.

Fortunately, the Internet (and before that, the mail-order catalog to a degree) provided the solution. Because while there were not enough male vegans in Boise in need of professional shoes to support a dedicated store (indeed, I doubt the number was significantly higher than 1), there are more than enough in the world to do so. And thus, we have the rise of successful online vegan shoe stores such as the literally named Vegetarian-Shoes.co.uk.

Back to Iran
So why did I tell you a long-winded story about the trials of the vegan shoe consumer? Because it actually explains the Iranian airline predicament quite well. When dealing with a very specialized product with limited demand, the size of the market is everything. By preventing other countries from trading with Iran, this is akin to removing the ability of the vegan shoe store to sell online. They might be able to survive, but they won't be able to specialize and refine their product as much as an organization that has the world market as their possible customer base. Combine that with Iran's inability to import products, and the result is that the products that are available probably aren't going to be as good. In this way, reducing the size of the market limits specialization and tends to reduce product quality as well.

Given this backdrop, the entry of Boeing, the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, into the Iranian market is likely to provide real and meaningful benefits to Iranian travelers. This alone would be great news.

Symbolic Implications
The benefits do not end there however. There's also a major symbolic component. As noted above, Iran and the US have been at odds more or less continuously since 1979. The two countries have been on the brink of war (with the US as the instigator) on multiple occasions, and it is almost a miracle that a direct full-scale conflict never erupted.

This is important context because Boeing isn't just a major aircraft manufacturer. They are also one of the US's largest defense contractors. This means that one of the principal members of the US military-industrial-complex is now engaging in a peaceful mutually beneficial trade with a nation that was a principal member on the US hit list until very recently. The US Government may have refused to fully normalize relations or fully lift sanctions on Iran. But Boeing is not waiting for the dust to settle. This deal represents a kind of private detente, one that may prove to be nearly as significant as the Iran Deal was in moving the ball towards normalcy.

Incentives Aligned with Peace and Trade
It should go without saying that Boeing did not pursue this deal out of the goodness of their heart. Instead, this is about the bottom line, and that's perfectly okay.

It should also be noted that, historically, Boeing is not shy about influencing the political process when it benefits the bottom line. This was seen most recently when it lobbied successfully for preserving that great archetype of corporate welfare, the Export-Import Bank. But influencing the government comes hand-in-hand with being a defense contractor. No individual or group in US society has much use for combat helicopters or other high-tech weapons. So if they are going to find a buyer, it will necessarily be through well-coordinated lobbying of the purchasers. This may explain why in the 2014 election cycle, Boeing was the 11th most prolific lobbying organization (based on dollars spent) in the US, according to OpenSecrets.org.

And as a defense contractor, it often makes business sense for Boeing to support war and hostilities around the globe. Rising tensions increase the perceived need for more weapons and military equipment, and war itself necessitates the replenishment of ammunition and equipment. From a financial perspective, these are great things for Boeing.

In this case, however, the tables have turned. Boeing has made the calculation that the potential profits from gaining Iranian airlines as new civilian aircraft customers are larger than the profits associated with an outright conflict or just continuing tensions in the region. The fact that Boeing pursued and announced this deal publicly, even before some of the details are final, proves that they have committed to this decision.

This is critical, because there will definitely be efforts to try to shut it down. Already, members of Congress have weighed in suggesting that this deal somehow represents a threat to US national security if Iran replaces old civilian airplanes with new, American-made ones. There are also still residual obstacles to the deal emerging from Obama's failure to honestly implement sanctions relief. Currently, Iran is still effectively denied access to the international payments system, so it's unclear how they would pay for the $25 billion deal. This has made some skeptical that the deal will actually stick.

My view, however, is that the sale will stand. This deal represents an opportunity for Boeing to earn more revenue from one customer than the whole company did in the first quarter of this year. Boeing has a very strong vested interest in seeing this transaction through. And their extensive lobbying power means they will almost certainly be able to eliminate any existing political obstacles in their path. If Boeing's lobbying organization can save the Export-Import Bank, which has no legitimate arguments supporting it, then surely it can also ram through a business deal that has no legitimate arguments opposing it. Hopefully, in the process, they'll eliminate the obstacles for other countries and companies to trade with Iran as well. In short, Boeing's profit-driven self-interest may be able to provide relief that President Obama promised but refused to provide himself.

Time will tell how all the details shake out on this story. But for now, we can sit back and enjoy the beautiful spectacle. A defense contractor is lobbying for peace and trade with Iran--and they are going to win.

*Disclaimer: This link portrays US actions in a much more positive light than is warranted, but it still summarizes some of the key events.

Subtle Sanctions Against Iran Remain in Place

Reuters and Antiwar.com are both reporting bad news this week about the relationship between the US and Iran. Although many US sanctions were formally lifted off Iran this January as part of the nuclear inspection deal, the US continues to subtly block Iran from being reintegrated into the global economic system. In particular, the US is denying Iranian companies and their partners access to use the US dollar or the US financial system.

This may not sound like a big deal on its face, but it's actually a very significant barrier. Since the dollar still currently serves as the world's reserve currency, many international transactions are actually transacted in dollars at some point (as an intermediate currency). And these transactions generally flow through the US financial system. Accordingly, this seemingly small action can have a major effect. And to hear the State Department talk about it, it sounds like there are no plans to consider loosening up on these restrictions anytime soon. It appears. the US is complying with the letter of the Iran Deal, but is still actively trying to prevent Iran from becoming a normal nation in the international community.

In the short-run, this is pretty much bad news across-the-board. The US's actions are understandably perceived by some in Iran as yet more evidence the US can't be trusted; we effectively exploited a loophole in the agreement to get out of providing more sanctions relief, so it's hard to blame anyone who takes that view. This, in turn, means that there will be more hostility between the two countries, and the chances of a flare-up in tensions down the road is higher than it needs to be. Of course, the inability to fully integrate in the global economy is also direct bad news for the Iranian people. This limitation will continue to inhibit trade and needlessly stunt their economic growth.

Another short-run consequence, albeit of less significance, is that US companies won't be able to benefit from the new trade with Iran. The inability to use the US financial system, means that Iran will look more towards Europe instead. European companies would seem to be the only real major beneficiaries of this behavior by the US.

If we look in the longer-term, however, this latest episode might have an accidental silver lining. The US is basically overplaying its hand here. Most of developed world was on board with the Iran nuclear inspection deal and lifting sanctions. The US's decision to leave some significant sanctions in place, arguably violating the spirit of the agreement, will only help speed the transition toward a global financial system that less heavily influenced by the US. This would then reduce the US's power to use sanctions as a threat and could eventually weaken the US's foreign policy tools more generally. Given the US's historical willingness to abuse such tools, this is probably good thing.

In this sense, we can look at the dollar and the US financial system's commanding hold on global commerce much the same way that Austrian economists look at monopolies. When the US pulls a stunt where it appears to unjustly use its influence in the financial system, it's like when a monopoly tries to raise its prices above a reasonable level. In the short-run, everyone has little choice but to pay. But each time this happens, it moves the world and the market one step closer to openly challenging the monopoly with a better, more independent, alternative. This process makes monopoly and empire alike relatively unstable over the long-term. Because each time someone tries to gain an advantage from exploiting their monopoly / empire position, they are actively working towards their own demise.

None of this is likely to be much consolation to Iran as US policy is going to continue to inhibit the development of the Iranian economy in the near-term. But at least for me, it is reassuring to know that in the market, as with diplomacy, bad policy does eventually backfire on the issuer. Let's hope it happens soon.

Celebrating Obama's Two Foreign Policy Achievements

Yesterday, President Obama became the first sitting President to visit Cuba since 1928. His visit was an effort to solidify his move to normalize relations with Cuba, and by all accounts it appears to have gone reasonably well.

While this remains only the first in a series of steps to fully open up relations and trade with Cuba, it's long overdue. And it's one of two lonely bright spots in President Obama's foreign policy record after seven years in the White House. His other accomplishment is the Iran nuclear deal, which already begun to bear fruit as Iran rapidly implemented their side of the agreement, sanctions have been partially lifted, and the Iranian people showed their approval by electing more conciliatory and open-minded politicians in the most recent elections. (Shortly after the deal was implemented, we discussed Obama's efforts to poison the relationship anew by imposing new, unrelated sanctions on their missile program. Fortunately, the sanctions were not broad-based, and appeared to have little import beyond convincing Iran to trust Europeans more than Americans when selecting business partners--probably a good call.)

The rest of Obama's legacy in the realm of foreign policy is abysmal--including the following:

• Overthrowing the government of Libya, which is now in abject chaos
• Supporting, however indecisively, the protracted civil war in Syria, thereby contributing to the rise of ISIS and a flood of millions of refugees from Syria
• Recognizing the coup government in Egypt
• Recognizing the coup government in Ukraine
• Supporting the Saudi-led War in Yemen
• Prolonging the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which US troops are still fighting
• Expanding the use of drone assassinations

Even so, it's important to recognize accomplishments and give credit where it's due. For Obama, that means Cuba and Iran.

Incidentally, the stories of how Iran and Cuba came to be on America's bad side share striking similarities. Both had a brutal US-backed puppet government that was eventually overthrown and replaced by an overtly hostile regime, in 1959 for Cuba and 1979 for Iran. In both cases, relations have been in ill-repair ever since, and the US has tried unsuccessfully to engineer a new coup.

Here, we'll let Dan Sanchez at Antiwar.com pick up the rest of the story. Dan's new piece touches on the history of both of these entanglements, and explains how the sanctions designed to combat them were at once doomed to fail and fantastically vicious in their inception. The following quote in particular stands out (emphasis mine):

Moreover, cold wars make it easy for rogue state governments to shift the blame for domestic troubles away from their own misrule, and onto the foreign bogeyman/scapegoat (“bogeygoat?”) instead. This is especially easy for being to some extent correct, especially with regard to economic blockades and other crippling sanctions, like those Washington has imposed on Cuba, Iran, etc. 

Imperial governments [the US] like to pretend that affairs are quite the reverse, adopting the essentially terrorist rationale that waging war against the civilian populace of a rogue state will pressure them to blame and turn against their governments. In reality, it only tends to bolster public support for the regime.

The rest of the piece is equally good. We'll leave you with a link and a hope that President Obama doesn't feel too uncomfortable doing something good for a change:

A New Dawn for Cuba and Iran?

Want to Spread Democratic Values? Try Peace and Trade

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
Source: Wikipedia

In the aftermath of the Cold War, many US policymakers have publicly embraced the idea of spreading democracy and freedom as a central goal of US foreign policy. It's not clear whether most politicians actually believe in this or have just cynically adopted it for political purposes. But it has been a major component of the marketing of every modern war. So the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was sold as Operation Enduring Freedom and focused not only on getting revenge for 9/11, but also on the lack of women's rights under the ruling Taliban regime. Similarly, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not exclusively based on the alleged threat of weapons of mass destruction and imagined links to Al Qaeda. Rather, the Bush Administration and its allies also claimed that we would "be greeted as liberators" in Iraq.

Under the Obama Administration, the goal of spreading democracy has taken a partial backseat to the more expansive mandate of humanitarian intervention, but democracy spreading is still there. Thus, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes the unwise choice to defend the disastrous Libyan war, she often celebrates the fact that they held democratic elections afterwards, as if that were an end in itself.

Of course, it is worth debating whether the US really should have spreading democracy as a core mission at all.* But if we accept that premise for the sake of argument, we arrive at an equally important question. If the US does want to spread democracy and expand freedoms around the world, what is the most effective method to do so?

Recent history is quite clear that the answer is not military intervention. The countries that have been most heavily targeted in the so-called War on Terror can be described as many things; functioning liberal democracy is not one of them.

But on the contrary, there are new signs that the alternative approach of peace and trade may be quite effective. The Iran nuclear deal will likely go down as Obama's only significant positive achievement in the realm of foreign policy. Iran's enrichment capabilities were diminished, around-the-clock inspections were put in place, and most important of all, broad sanctions against Iran were lifted in exchange. For the first time in many years, Iran is able to participate in the global markets largely unimpeded. Many of the Iranian people appear to be feeling more optimistic about their future economic prospects.

The moderate President Rouhani successfully campaigned for election back in 2013 on the promise of ending the standoff with the West and bringing an end to the economic sanctions. He made good on that promise. And in the most recent national elections, the Iranian voters showed their broad approval of these efforts. Moderate and Reformist candidates won a lopsided victory in the elections, unseating many of the hard-liners that had attempted to block progress towards a nuclear agreement with the West.

These latest results appear to pave the way for a more rapid normalization of relations with the West and potentially more domestic reforms in the country as well. And all of this now seems possible even though the Iranian political system that governed these elections is far from free or open. As commentator Muhammad Sahimi recently explained, political candidates are subject to a formal approval process by existing political bodies before they are allowed to run, and many candidates are denied. In spite of these limitations, the forces for moderation appear to have made significant gains.

It's difficult to predict exactly how this will play out over the remainder of Rouhani's term. But the initial results offer strong anecdotal evidence in favor of diplomacy and trade as the most effective tools in the foreign policy arsenal. The reason why should be intuitive. It appears that countries, like people, are persuaded more readily by positive rewards than negative coercion. And it's always a great thing when common sense gets another data point in its favor.

*I, for one, would prefer a mission more akin to the Hippocratic Oath: First do no harm.

Sanctions Against Iran Lifted, Followed by New Sanctions

This weekend, Iran's compliance with the terms of last summer's nuclear deal was officially verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Shortly thereafter, the P5+1 nations (UN Security Council + Germany) proceeded to lift the majority of their sanctions against Iran, pursuant to the terms of the agreement. Additionally, coinciding with this agreement, the US and Iran successfully negotiated a prisoner swap whereby Iran released 5 US prisoners and got 7 Iranian prisoners released in return.

These were remarkably positive developments for all parties involved. Any reasonable fears remaining about Iran developing a nuclear weapon were mollified, and the Iranian people regained access to the world markets, which will surely be a boon to their economy. More importantly, it showed that diplomacy can produce success, and it was a win for the voices of restraint and moderation in both Iran and the United States. Trade was opened, and the war drums were muffled. Given Obama's record on virtually every other foreign policy issue of his presidency,* it almost seemed too good to be true. A day later, we learned that it was.

Dovetailing closely with Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton's own calls for new sanctions against Iran, President Obama announced yesterday that the US would impose new sanctions against certain individuals and entities involved in Iran's ballistic missile program. This issue relates to the uproar that occurred last fall when Iran tested new ballistic missiles.

As a practical matter, these sanctions aren't nearly as bad for the Iranian people as the initial ones were. They are targeted in nature, and only 11 entities made the list. Presumably, this will have a negligible impact on the Iranian economy and will happily do very little to offset the gains from the lifted sanctions.

That said, these sanctions are important as a possible sign of things to come. On the heels of diffusing several long-standing diplomatic issues and avoiding a potential crisis last week, the US had a choice to make. We could either fully bring Iran in from the cold and treat it like any other nation, that is neither perfectly virtuous nor perfectly evil. Or we could continue to be hostile towards Iran to score domestic political points and appease our allies, principally Israel and Saudi Arabia. The new sanctions suggest that we are choosing the path of hostility.

We know this because the premise for these new sanctions is highly dubious. It is debated by some whether the recent ballistic missile tests violated the letter or spirit of UN resolutions against missile development. But this is the wrong debate. It is more important to ask why those UN resolutions against Iran existed in the first place. It turns out the restrictions against ballistic missile development were implemented in connection with the nuclear program. That is, the restrictions  were originally put in place to prevent Iran from developing a delivery vehicle for the nuclear weapons they were allegedly developing. So now that the nuclear issue is resolved, implementing new sanctions on the ostensibly related ballistic missile program doesn't make a lot of sense. Even if it is legal based on the letter of the restrictions, it's easy to see this as a show of bad faith by the US, especially coming a day after the triumph of lifting other sanctions.

Now, some have pointed out that it is wrong for people who support peace to oppose sanctions on weapons development. While this suggestion is understandable, it is flawed for two reasons.

First, this ban is not uniform. It's not a treaty restricting development of weapons across all nations or even a detente kind of agreement between rivals to lower tensions, which would certainly warrant support. Rather, it singles out one nation in particular for special, negative treatment. As we've said, practically, this is likely of little importance. But symbolically, it means Iran is still deemed a pariah state by some, which increases, rather than decreases tensions.

Second, it's tough to see how Iran has committed the kind of exceptional atrocities that might warrant entirely unique treatment. It is often pointed out by critics that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and has committed human rights abuses at home. Under any plausible definition of terrorism, this is certainly true. If nothing else, Iran's support for notoriously brutal Shiite militias in Iraq and their ongoing competition with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for the most executions, would check both boxes. But, they are far from alone in this regard. Saudi Arabia, with its oppression at home, brutal campaign in Yemen, and support for jihadists in Syria, would qualify. Similarly, NATO ally Turkey's newly ramped up repression of press freedom at home and their collusion with Al Qaeda in Syria would also qualify. If we're going to sanction Iran on these grounds, consistency would seem to demand we cast a broader net. But obviously, it goes without saying that this is not the path the US will choose. Turkey is still an ally, and Saudi Arabia somehow has a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.

Opposition to sanctions, old or new, does not rest on a belief that Iran's government is a paragon of virtue. Nor does it require apologizing or exonerating them for their misdeeds. It only requires one to believe that the rule of law is just as important internationally as it is domestically; that Iran deserves the same consideration as other countries; and that sanctions and criticism should be issued based on a country's actions, not just their alliances. These latest sanctions do not follow that script. And right at the time when peace looked certain to emerge, they moved us one step back toward hostility. The new sanctions aren't about arms control, and they're moving us closer to war, not peace.

*I'm excluding Cuba here. We haven't fully normalized relations with them yet, but we're much closer than when Obama took office, and he deserves credit for that.

Iran Takes Another Step Towards Implementing Nuclear Deal

Today, we have a welcome bit of good news out of Iran. At Antiwar.com today, Jason Ditz is reporting that Iran has shipped the vast majority of its remaining enriched uranium stockpile to Russia, where it will be converted before being sent back to Iran. The conversion process transforms the uranium into a form that can only be used for energy production and not for the production of nuclear weapons. Thus, by sending the majority of its stockpile to Russia, Iran is severely limiting any capability to move towards a nuclear weapon. And by complying with the terms of the nuclear deal so quickly, Iran is hoping to also expedite the relief from international sanctions. In short, this is really a win for everyone.

Lest anyone should be confused, we should hasten to point out that there is no solid evidence that the Iranians were actually trying to develop a nuclear weapon at any time in recent history. Even the intelligence community concluded that it couldn't find evidence of a weapons program after 2003, and other authors have credibly contended that in fact, the Iranians never pursued such a program because it was deemed forbidden under Islamic law. Wherever the truth lies here, there is no basis for the presumption of Iranian guilt employed by Western media when discussing this topic. This latest step towards compliance offers further evidence that the Iranian aspirations were peaceful in nature. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the US will keep up its end of the deal and lift sanctions, but Iran appears to be doing everything it can to comply with the deal.

And given the general tide of chaos sweeping over much of the Middle East, it's nice to know that with at least one country, we are moving away from war and towards peace. Let's hope this trend can continue.