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“Ahmadinejad said during a speech at a gathering of the personnel of Sarcheshmeh Copper Complex in the city of Sarcheshmeh, the southeastern province of Kerman, on Thursday. The European Union formally imposed an oil embargo on Iran and agreed to a freeze on the assets of the Central Bank of Iran on Monday, but existing contracts will be honored until July 1. “The West must be aware that the Iranian nation… does not need them. You impose embargo on Iran’s oil but do not see that the United States has not bought oil from us for 30 years, but nothing happened, and Iran followed its path with dignity,” Ahmadinejad said, addressing European countries. He stated that the sanctions are futile……….” Mehr News

Yet this next news item seems to contradict Ahmadinejad’s assertion that the sanctions will not hurt. He is right in one respect: the sanctions are unlikely to hurt the regime. They always hurt the people:

“A top Iranian diplomat has expressed Tehran’s displeasure over an announcement by certain Persian Gulf Arab states to replace Iran’s oil exports, saying Iran will consider such a move as “unfriendly”. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iranian deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, made the remarks during a meeting with the undersecretary of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Khalid Al-Jarallah, in Kuwait City on Thursday. Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi last week said that his country will make up for any shortfall in world oil supply caused by sanctions against Iran. ………” Mehr News

The Iranians must have a sense of having been here before, a sense of déjà vu (all over again). During the utterly senseless and futile 1980-99 war, their petroleum facilities were bombed and they were under an American economic siege. Not only did the Saudis pick up the slack and expanded their market share, other Gulf states also sold their own oil for Ba’athist Iraq’s account (Saddam’s exports were severely curtailed).
The Iranians resorted to the “tankers war’ to punish other Gulf exporters, which led to some naval skirmishes with the U.S. navy. The Iranians did not do well in those skirmishes, had some of their speedboats and offshore oil platforms destroyed. The lowest point came on July 3rd 1988, when the USS Vincennes shot down a civilian Iranian airliner (Iran Air 655) over the Gulf, killing nearly 300 civilians. The ceasefire was declared in August.
Had those passengers been Westerners (like the Pan Am 103), and had the guilty party been Libya (like the Pan Am 103), the Iranian victims would have received more than a billion dollars from Qaddafi (just like the Pan Am 103 victims). All posthumously of course (just like the Pan Am 103 victims).
Cheers
mhg


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