According to the Boston Globe, the Bush
Administration is pushing for unilateral sanctions against Iran for attempting to start a nuclear Program. The Russian
foreign minister,
Sergey Lavrov who met with Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, has
stated that he has doubts that such sanctions will be effective . While I'm glad that the
administration is looking at non-military options, I believe we should heed
Lavrov's advice and not pursue
sanctions. They never affect the people we are aiming to influence anyway, they only hurt the average person who is
struggling to make ends meet just as we are. The elite can always obtain what they want from some "friendly" country abroad. The sanctions in fact strengthen the resolve of people like
Ahmadinejad. I w
onder if we couldn't loosen his grip on power a little by trading
more with Iran.The people themselves like us and our products (and don't want world War III any more than we do), and we might have an opportunity here to influence their culture through trade.We as citizens
should be trying to learn more about the Islamic Culture anyway. We could then bring back the citizen diplomacy that we practiced with the Russians during the Cold War.
Eventually that worked.
