Salon.com > Brian Murphy

Sanctions hit Iran’s merchants

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:29:00 +0000

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Tehran shoe factory is abandoned by its European leather suppliers. Iranian cooking oil manufacturers are operating at nearly half capacity because they can't get enough imported grains.

In Tehran's bazaar, many merchants refuse to sell Western goods purchased with dollars because the downward spiral of Iran's currency has eaten their profit.

While Iran's mainstay oil exports remain the centerpiece of Western sanctions — intended to wring concessions over Iran's nuclear program and ease Israeli threats of a military strike — the Islamic Republic hangs on as OPEC's third-largest exporter as it feeds the hungry energy markets in China, India and across Asia.

Less noted — but potentially more unsettling to Iran's leaders in the coming months — is the increasing pinch on the workaday economy: The commerce, transactions and trading that provide the paychecks and economic lifelines for millions of people.

Despite evidence the sanctions are hurting individuals, it appears that Iran's economy continues to stumble along in large part thanks to Chinese imports and oil flows to Asia.

Saudi women begin challenge to driving ban

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:16:39 +0000

A campaign to defy Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving opened Friday with female motorists getting behind the wheel -- including one who took a 45-minute tour through the nation's capital -- amid calls for sustained challenges to the restrictions in the ultraconservative kingdom.

Activists have not appealed for mass protests in any specific sites in Saudi Arabia, but are urging Saudi women to begin a growing mutiny against the male-only driving rules supported by clerics backing austere interpretations of Islam and enforced by powerful morality squads.

Calls for an ongoing road rebellion -- inspired in part by the uprisings around the Arab world -- could push Western-backed Saudi authorities into difficult choices: either launching a crackdown and facing international pressure or giving way to the demands and angering traditional-minded clerics and other groups opposing reforms.

It also could encourage other reform bids by Saudi women, who have not been allowed to vote and must obtain permission from a male guardian to travel or take a job.

"We want women from today to begin exercising their rights," said Wajeha al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women's rights activist who posted Internet clips of herself driving in 2008. "Today on the roads is just the opening in a long campaign. We will not go back."

Saudi Arabia intervenes in Bahrain protests

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:39:00 +0000

A Saudi-led military force crossed into Bahrain Monday to prop up the monarchy against widening demonstrations that have sent waves of fear through Gulf states over the potential for enemy Iran to take new footholds on their doorsteps.

The Bahrain conflict is sectarian as much as pro-democracy, as the strategic Gulf island nation's majority Shiite Muslims see an opportunity to rid themselves of two centuries of rule by a Sunni monarchy.

But Gulf Sunni leaders worry that might give Shiite Iran a stepping stone to its arch-rival Saudi Arabia, connected to Bahrain by a wide causeway.

Instead, the Saudis and the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council sent forces the other way, deploying about 1,000 troops by land and air and cementing the entire six-nation alliance to the fate of Bahrain's rulers, key U.S. allies as hosts of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

The first cross-border offensive against one of the rebellions sweeping the Mideast was not greeted with celebrations.

Shortly after word of the foreign military reinforcements began to spread through the island nation, protesters blocked roads in the capital Manama. Thousands of others swarmed into Pearl Square, the symbolic center of the monthlong revolt.

Egypt echoes across region: Iran, Bahrain, Yemen

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:55:00 +0000

The possible heirs of Egypt's uprising took to the streets Monday in different corners of the Middle East: Iran's beleaguered opposition stormed back to central Tehran and came under a tear gas attack by police. Demonstrators faced rubber bullets and birdshot to demand more freedoms in the relative wealth of Bahrain. And protesters pressed for the ouster of the ruler in poverty-drained Yemen.

The protests -- all with critical interests for Washington -- offer an important lesson about how groups across Middle East are absorbing the message from Cairo and tailoring it to their own aspirations.

The heady themes of democracy, justice and empowerment remain intact as the protest wave works it way through the Arab world and beyond. What changes, however, are the objectives. The Egypt effect, it seems, is elastic.

"This isn't a one-size-fits-all thing," said Mustafa Alani, a regional analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. "Each place will interpret the fallout from Egypt in their own way and in their own context."

For the Iranian opposition -- not seen on the streets in more than a year -- it's become a moment to reassert its presence after facing relentless pressures.

Fallout from Egypt being felt in region

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:26:48 +0000

Less than a month after the world watched Tunisia celebrate the collapse of the country's strong-arm ruler, the scenes in central Cairo on Friday offered an even more potent display of the newfound power of the Arab street: fist-pumping crowds cheering the end of President Hosni Mubarak.

The downfall of Mubarak -- one of the mainstays of Middle East politics and Western policies in the region for nearly three decades -- marks another history-shaping moment for the Arab world from a country seen by many as its political and cultural crucible.

What began as a tentative cry against an entrenched regime in late January grew into a popular mutiny that forced Mubarak to flee Cairo and then step down in just a few dizzying hours.

But the revolution on the Nile -- which reached its climax 32 years to the day after the fall of the government of the U.S.-backed shah of Iran -- raises deep questions about the long-term stability of other Western-allied regimes across the region and could significantly recalibrate America's policy playbook from the Mediterranean to the Gulf.

There is no guarantee that the reform wave will wash over another country soon. An attempt to stir Egypt-inspired protests in Syria earlier this month was snuffed out by security forces.

Iran’s president abruptly fires foreign minister

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 20:05:00 +0000

Iran's president abruptly fired his foreign minister Monday and named the nuclear chief as acting top diplomat, the latest sign of a rift at the top levels of the Islamic theocracy as the country faces intense pressure from the West over its nuclear program.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave no explanation for the change in a brief statement on his website. But the fired diplomat, Manouchehr Mottaki, is seen as close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And the president may be aiming to install a figure more personally loyal to himself as Tehran resumes critical talks with world powers over the nuclear program that has brought four rounds of U.N. sanctions on Iran.

The nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, is one of Ahmadinejad's 12 vice presidents.

"This move shows not only the internal tensions but the primacy of the nuclear issue as Iran's main foreign policy objective," said Rasool Nafisi, an expert on Iranian affairs at Strayer University in Virginia.

Just a week before the shake-up, Iran resumed negotiations with six world powers over its suspect nuclear program after a long hiatus and another round is planned for early next year. Four sets of U.N. sanctions appear to be biting into the Iranian economy and Ahmadinejad may be looking for a loyal foreign minister who will help him clinch a deal with the six powers to ease the punitive measures.

Coordinated blasts hit Baghdad; kill at least 127

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:05:00 +0000

A series of coordinated attacks struck Baghdad Tuesday, including two suicide car bombers and another vehicle that blew up near government sites. At least 127 were killed and hundreds wounded in the worst wave of violence in the capital in more than a month, authorities said.

A total of five attacks, which also included a suicide car bomb on a police patrol, showed the ability of insurgents to strike high-profile targets in the heart of Baghdad and marked the third time since August that government buildings were targeted with multiple blasts that killed more than 100 people.

The bombings reinforced concerns about shortcomings in Iraqi security as U.S. forces plan their withdrawal, and parliament held an emergency session with many lawmakers demanding answers for apparent security lapses.

Iraq's military spokesman blamed the carnage on an alliance of al-Qaida in Iraq and members of Saddam Hussein's banned Baath Party.

The U.S. military has sent some troops and forensic equipment to assist the Iraqis in the aftermath, said Army Master Sgt. Nicholas Conner, a military spokesman.

Coordinated blasts hit Baghdad; kill at least 118

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:01:00 +0000

A series of coordinated attacks struck Baghdad Tuesday, including two suicide car bombers and another vehicle that blew up near government sites. At least 118 were killed and hundreds wounded in the worst wave of violence in the capital in more than a month, authorities said.

Iraq's military spokesman blamed the carnage on an alliance of al-Qaida in Iraq and members of Saddam Hussein's banned Baath Party.

The U.S. military has sent some troops and forensic equipment to assist the Iraqis in the aftermath, said Army Master Sgt. Nicholas Conner, a military spokesman.