Another “Success” Story from U.S. Sanctions
29 January 2010By Jacob G. Hornberger
U.S. officials can claim another “success” with their
sanctions against Iran. A Russian-made Tupolev
airplane crash-landed in Iran, injuring 42 passengers.
Those passengers were much luckier than those
traveling on an Iranian flight to Armenia last summer.
All 168 passengers were killed. That plane was
Russian-built too.
Also last summer, another Iranian Russian-built plane
skidded off a runway and caught fire, killing 16
passengers and injuring 21 more.
In February 2006 another Russian-built Iranian plane
crash-landed, killing 29 passengers.
What do all those plane crashes have to do with the
brutal sanctions that the U.S. government has been
enforcing for several years against Iran?
According to an article about the latest crash in the
Washington Post: , “U.S. sanctions against Iran have
prevented it from buying new aircraft or spare parts
from the West, forcing it to add to its aging fleet of
Boeing and Airbus planes with aircraft from Russia and
other former Soviet Union states.”
An article published a couple of weeks ago on Wired,
entitled “Sanctions Keep Vintage Aircraft Flying in
Iran” by Keith Barry, addressed the heart of the
problem:
“Blocked from purchasing modern Western aircraft by
economic sanctions in place since the 1979 Islamic
Revolution, Iran’s domestic airlines rely on an aging
fleet of planes that have largely disappeared from
North American and European skies. As a result, what
Havana is to old cars, Tehran is to old airplanes.”
The reference to Havana and old cars is to the 50-year
U.S. sanctions/embargo against Cuba, which, operating
in conjunction with Castro’s socialist economic
system, has succeeded in squeezing the economic
lifeblood out of the Cuban people.
The sanctions against Iran also bring to mind the 11
years of brutal sanctions against Iraq, which
succeeded in contributing to the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Iraqi children. Part of the reason for
this was the same problem that afflicts the Iranian
airliner fleet: the Iraqi sanctions precluded Iranian
officials from acquiring the necessary equipment and
parts to repair the water-and-sewage treatment plants
that the U.S. government intentionally destroyed
during the Persian Gulf War, with full knowledge of
what effect that would have on the spread of
infectious illnesses.
I would be remiss if I failed to point out the
official mindset of Washington regarding the “success”
of the Iraq sanctions, as reflected by the immortal
statement of U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine
Albright, who told “Sixty Minutes” that the deaths of
half-a-million Iraqi children were “worth it.”
The purpose of the U.S. sanctions against Iran? It’s
the same as the sanctions against Cuba and Iraq:
regime change — that is, the ouster of regimes that
oppose the U.S. Empire and their replacement with
regimes that will do the Empire’s bidding.
What happens if an Iranian who has lost his parents,
spouse, children, or countrymen on any of those
flights retaliates out of anger and rage with a
terrorist strike against the United States? The
official response of U.S. officials will be the same
as it was after the 1993 terrorist attack on the World
Trade Center and the 9/11 terrorist attacks: “We’re
innocent! We’re innocent! The U.S. government is
innocent. We have done nothing wrong. We’ve just been
minding our own business. The terrorists are lying
when they say they’re angry over losing their loved
ones as a result of the sanctions we have imposed
against Iran. Everyone knows that terrorists hate
America for our freedom and religious values.”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The
Future of Freedom Foundation.
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments