Why aren’t the U.S. and its allies imposing tougher sanctions?

 NY TIMES

People trying to flee Kyiv by bus.Emile Ducke for The New York Times

Partial measures

Western leaders have described the sanctions that they have imposed on Russia as “strong” and “severe.” And the sanctions will damage the Russian economy. After the U.S. and Britain announced new measures yesterday — making it harder for Russian companies to raise money or import goods — an index of Moscow’s stock market fell more than 30 percent.

But it’s also worth taking a look at the potential sanctions that the U.S., Britain and the European Union have chosen not to impose. They are almost certainly more severe than the sanctions going into effect. A full-scale diplomatic response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could include:

Suspending Russia from international organizations, like the SWIFT network of banks (as Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, suggested yesterday) and the Interpol network of law enforcement (as Garry Kasparov, the Russian opposition figure, has called for). Seizing apartments, yachts and other assets owned by many members of the Russian elite in London, Miami and elsewhere, as Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic has suggested. Cracking down on Vladimir Putin’s propaganda tools in the West, including the RT television network, and on people like Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor who now works for a Russian oil company. Perhaps most significant, sharply reduce purchases of Russian oil and natural gas, by far the country’s largest source of revenue.

That the U.S. and its allies have chosen not to pursue a more aggressive path helps explain why Putin has been willing to take the enormous risk of starting the most significant war in Europe in 80 years. He believes that his enemies will respond in a limited way. Not only will they decline to send troops to Ukraine; they will fight only a limited economic and diplomatic battle, too.

This decision could change at some point, of course. For now, I want to help you understand why the Western response has been so limited.

A Ukrainian military aircraft was shot down near Kyiv.State Emergency Service/Via Reuters

Three reasons

1. Sanctions will hurt the West, too. “It’s very hard to get countries to sign up for truly tough sanctions against Russia,” Michael Crowley, who covers the State Department for The Times, told me. “It comes at a cost to their own economies.”

Freezing out Russian banks could create problems for the global financial system. Hurting Russia’s energy industry would increase prices when inflation is already high and angering many Western workers. The effects would often be largest in the E.U., which may explain why European officials have often been more dovish on sanctions than American or British officials.

(Here’s an explainer about why the U.S. cannot unilaterally cut off Russia from the SWIFT financial network — and why some Europeans have reservations.)

“The European Union is Russia’s largest trading partner, accounting for 37 percent of its global trade in 2020, and receives a third of its energy from Russia,” my colleague Patricia Cohen wrote. “The flip side of mutual interest is mutual pain.” Matina Stevis-Gridneff, The Times’s Brussels bureau chief, adds: “The reality is that many of the tougher sanctions are considered too onerous for Europe.”

One unknown is whether the ugly reality of war in Ukraine — as opposed to merely the prospect of it — will make Western leaders and citizens more willing to accept economic costs. If not, Putin’s gamble may have succeeded, which autocrats elsewhere will no doubt notice.

2. The West worried about closing off lines of communication. Western allies have started to impose more measures designed to hurt Russian oligarchs and top officials. But the sanctions have not yet targeted the very top officials, including Putin, nor have they cut off many Russian elites’ access to the West.

Anti-war protesters in St. Petersburg, Russia.Anton Vaganov/Reuters

The result, as Applebaum has written, is that much of Putin’s inner circle has felt insulated from sanctions (including those imposed after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014). Rather than seizing the assets of Russian elites and expelling their children from boarding schools and universities, the West has tried to negotiate. In effect, Applebaum argues, two sides in this battle are playing by different rules.

“Western leaders and diplomats,” she wrote, “think they live in a world where rules matter, where diplomatic protocol is useful, where polite speech is valued. All of them think that when they go to Russia, they are talking to people whose minds can be changed by argument or debate. They think the Russian elite cares about things like its ‘reputation.’ It does not.”

3. The West has wanted to move slowly — both to retain future options and to avoid aggravating the crisis.

As Matina reports, the E.U. is keeping some sanctions in reserve. Doing so will allow it to impose them if Putin later expands the war and will also keep open a channel of communication with the Kremlin, officials say. Critics of this approach, on the other hand, say it “gives the impression of proportionality to a completely outrageous move by Putin which should be met by shock and awe,” Matina said.

For now, the critics are losing the debate.

Dmitri Alperovitch, an American technology executive born in Russia, argues that a full-on sanctions program would bring major risks, too. It could debilitate Russia’s economy and make Putin fear for his regime. Russia might hit back by restricting energy exports, to increase inflation and cause political instability in democracies. Russia could also launch cyberattacks.

“This outcome — a hot conflict between two nuclear powers with extensive cyber capabilities — is one that everyone in the world should be anxious to avoid,” Alperovitch wrote in The Economist. It’s a reminder that there are rarely easy answers once a war begins.

The latest: Here are the sanctions E.U. leaders have agreed on.

IRAN AND THE HAWKS

PETER BEINART DAILY BEAST

I like hearing Iran hawks argue for war. It’s not because I think war makes sense. To the contrary, I agree with former defense secretary Robert Gates that attacking Iran would be “a catastrophe”  and with former Mossad chief Meir Dagan that it would make an Iranian bomb more likely, not less.

If you genuinely believe that, of course you want to attack. If Iran’s nuclear program really is motivated by a yearning to blow up the Middle East and thus hasten the coming of the hidden Twelfth Imam—rather than by such earthly impulses as deterrence, regional influence, and nationalist chest-puffing—then both diplomacy and sanctions are useless. You can’t stop death-worshipping Armageddon-seekers by offering them an American Embassy in Tehran. Or by limiting their access to hard currency. Since they’ll never limit their nuclear program on their own, you have to do it for them.

The problem with such a view is that war frightens people, especially after two other painful and unsuccessful Middle Eastern conflicts boosted by many of the same folks who are now boosting an attack on Iran. So to promote war, hawks must first show that every other more palatable option has been tried and failed. Thus, as America and Iran pursue the most serious nuclear diplomacy in their history, Netanyahu and company insist that they’d love to see sanctions and diplomacy succeed. They just define success in a way that makes it impossible.


Iran’s nuclear facility at Bushehr

In recent days, the Obama administration has been pursuing an interim deal that would give Iran limited sanctions relief in return for some kind of freeze of its nuclear program. Such a deal might pave the way for a final agreement that gave Iran even greater sanctions relief, diplomatic recognition, and the right to maintain some level of low-enriched uranium in return for a highly intrusive inspections regime that guaranteed that Tehran did not produce a nuclear bomb.

Netanyahu, by contrast, defines success as no enriched uranium on Iranian soil, even if it isn’t close to the level needed to make a bomb. And he wants the U.S. and its allies to maintain—if not strengthen—sanctions until Tehran knuckles under to that demand. The problem is that most governments, including those of U.S. allies such as Germany and Japan, interpret the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as allowing peaceful enrichment. And in Iran, as Georgetown’s Colin Kahl has noted, even the Green Movement generally supports the right to enrich. That’s partly because in a country like Iran, which has suffered greatly from Washington’s imperial meddling, the right to enrich has become a symbol of sovereignty and national pride, even among people who loathe the regime and don’t necessarily want a nuke. In Kahl’s words, “one is hard pressed to find a single bona fide Iran expert on the planet who believes Tehran would accept a diplomatic deal…that zeroed out enrichment for all time.”

Hawks argue that because sanctions are hurting Iran’s economy, and Iran has showed increased flexibility under newly elected President Hassan Rouhani, even more sanctions will make Tehran capitulate completely. Since “international sanctions have forced Iran to the negotiating table,” argued House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce recently, “we should build upon this success with additional measures to compel Iran to make meaningful and lasting concessions.”  But it’s hard to reconcile that view with any of the information coming out of Iran. While the pain of sanctions may be prompting Iranian leaders to make concessions they would not have previously made, there’s little evidence that the sanctions threaten what Iran’s leaders cherish most: their hold on power. To the contrary, prominent Green Revolution figures have argued that sanctions strengthen the regime at home.  Were Royce’s logic correct, Rouhani would be feeling the heat from Iranian doves outraged that he is not capitulating more fully to Western demands. Instead he’s under attack from hawks outraged that he’s conceding too much and getting little in return.

It’s hard to believe that hawks such as Netanyahu and Royce really believe that ratcheting up sanctions in pursuit of a zero enrichment demand that most foreign governments, and most Iranians, oppose, will bring a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear standoff. Then again, given what they’ve written in the past, it’s hard to believe that many hawks really want a diplomatic solution at all.

Iran Seeks a Nuclear Accord With Obama to End Sanctions. U.S. Strives to Reassure Israel

Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s new leader, received a private letter from President Obama about easing tensions between the countries.


N.Y. TIMES

Iran’s leaders, seizing on perceived flexibility in a private letter from President Obama, have decided to gamble on forging a swift agreement over their nuclear program with the goal of ending crippling sanctions, a prominent adviser to the Iranian leadership said.

 The adviser, who participated in top-level discussions of the country’s diplomatic strategy, said that Mr. Obama’s letter, delivered to Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, about three weeks ago, promised relief from sanctions if Tehran demonstrated a willingness to “cooperate with the international community, keep your commitments and remove ambiguities.” The text of the letter has not been made public.

The official said Mr. Obama had not promised Iran quick relief from sanctions, and had steered clear of any detailed proposal.


Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Officials and analysts said that Iran was focused on getting quick relief from financial sanctions because they have cut it off from the international banking system, and that in exchange it might be willing to curb its nuclear enrichment program. Some in the leadership are also worried that if nuclear talks do not yield quick results, Iran’s hard-line clerics and military men — currently sidelined — could attack Mr. Rouhani as a sellout and clip his political wings.

The Iranian leadership was encouraged by what was described as Mr. Obama’s offer to conduct face-to-face talks, which they prefer to the more bureaucratic and lengthy negotiating process with a group of five major world powers.

 

 The one-and-a-half-page letter, which the Iranian president answered with a letter of similar length, has kindled hopes that the international charm offensive Iran began after Mr. Rouhani’s election in June may produce a genuine diplomatic breakthrough. But the differing interpretations of Mr. Obama’s letter in Tehran and Washington are a reminder of the political hurdles and the legacy of mistrust that both sides will have to overcome in negotiating a deal.

 

A series of good-will gestures before the Iranian president’s trip next week to the United Nations included a release of political prisoners, including Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer, shown Wednesday with her husband and children at their home in Tehran.

 

 

The Iranian reaction to the letter provides critical insight into a decisive and unexpected shift in strategy by the moderate new president as Iran struggles to restore vitality to its economy and undo years of hostile relations with most of the world under the former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The overtures to the United States are part of a flurry of steps altering the trajectory of the Iranian state, including domestic liberalizations and returning the politically powerful military to the barracks — for now. Those actions, along with the changed diplomatic tone, have convinced some experts that the changes are more than cosmetic.

Mr. Rouhani will present Iran’s new face to world next week with an address to the United Nations General Assembly, an evening speech to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society, and a television interviews with Charlie Rose and CNN.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

N.Y. TIMES

White House officials are engaged in a quieter, behind-the-scenes effort to reassure Israel that they will not fall for the charms of Iran’s new president by prematurely easing pressure on his government to curb its nuclear program. In private conversations with Israeli officials and a few public statements, administration officials have emphasized that they remain skeptical of Iran’s intentions on the nuclear program, and that they will judge Iran by its actions, not by the conciliatory words of its newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani.

But the White House’s reassurances did not prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel from issuing a harsh condemnation of Mr. Rouhani this week, presaging a potential showdown with President Obama over how to deal with Iran, after a period in which the two leaders appeared finally to be in sync.

“There is no need to be fooled by the words,” said a lengthy Israeli statement issued late Thursday in response to Mr. Rouhani’s NBC News interview. “The test is not in what Rouhani says, but in the deeds of the Iranian regime, which continues to advance its nuclear program with vigor while Rouhani is being interviewed.”

Mr. Netanyahu, who has described Mr. Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” has stepped up his longstanding campaign against Iranian nuclear development in recent days, and plans to make it the focus of a meeting with Mr. Obama in Washington on Sept. 30 and a speech to the General Assembly the next day.

 

Iranians at a holy shrine in Qom, south of Tehran.

 

Washington and Jerusalem both want to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but have often disagreed on the timetable and strategy for doing so. Israel, which sees a nuclear Iran as a dire threat to its existence, has pressed for a more forceful military threat. The United States, while stressing that all options are on the table, has urged Israel to give diplomacy and sanctions more time.

Mr. Rouhani’s election has clearly intrigued the White House. Senior officials said that unlike his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he seemed to have the authority from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to negotiate on the nuclear issue. He also has a broad political mandate in Iran, officials said.

 

A former Netanyahu aide stated,  “Israel is clearly focused on Iranian action, and the messages in Washington seem more hopeful about Iranian intentions.”

 

 Emily Landau of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University said she saw “no indication of any willingness to reverse course on the nuclear front,” citing 1,000 new-generation centrifuges that enrich uranium faster and are more durable, as well as Mr. Rouhani’s refusal to consider suspending uranium enrichment.

But Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-Israeli lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, said Friday that there was a chance Mr. Rouhani was promising real change and that a meeting between him and Mr. Obama would be positive for Israel