Sanctioning Iran

Last week, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a measure to put a new round of sanctions on Iran, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009. Not only are sanctions an offensive maneuver perceived as a precursor to war, but it is clear that the United States is not promoting freedom and peace in the Middle East, because any arguments for sanctions against Iran depend on the destruction of liberty.

People say Iran can’t have the bomb because of what they might do with it. Until an individual actually commits some form of aggression against another human being it is no one’s right to infringe upon another’s right to keep and bear arms. This principle applies as equally to nations as it does to individual people, so in other words, we can’t use government force against people because of “what they might do.”

Some call Iran a “rogue nation” and they can’t be trusted. This is nothing more than a disgusting cultural bias which is flatly refuted by objective reality. In the past 50 years, Iran has never invaded another country or initiated military force against anyone. Beyond the 1979 hostage crisis, they have burned a few U.S. flags and said some very nasty things about the US and Israel. Other than that, they have been content to screw up their own country and leave the rest of the world alone. In contrast, the United States has invaded countless nations. The United States has committed direct acts of war against Iran, including overthrowing their democratically-elected government and appointing their own rulers. The United States has secret prisons all over the world, military bases in 147 countries¹, and while the President decries waterboarding and torture, he publicly supports extraordinary rendition² with expansions occurring  under his leadership³. Who’s the rogue nation now?

Iran lives in a world in which many of its neighbors possess nuclear weapons. In the event of a nuclear attack against Iran, there is nothing the “international community” can do until it is too late, just as there is nothing the police can do for an individual at the moment he is attacked by an aggressor. Like any potential mugging victim, Iran is much safer armed with a deterrent than at the mercy of those who wish Iran harm.

Ron Paul writing in the Times Gazette also brings up the issue of international respect:

…[B]eing surrounded by nuclear powers one can understand why they might want to become nuclear capable if only to defend themselves and to be treated more respectfully. After all, we don’t sanction nuclear capable countries. We take diplomatic negotiations a lot more seriously, and we frequently send money to them instead. The non-nuclear countries are the ones we bomb.⁴

The people of Iran as a sovereign nation have all of the same rights that the people of the United States do. It is not for the United States to decide what weapons Iran possesses any more than it is Iran’s place to decide what weapons the United States possesses. One would have to employ the most convoluted logic imaginable to arrive at any other conclusion. It is time to stop playing emperor with Iran and start practicing what we preach. We cannot in any way deny Iran the right to bear arms.

Lineage: Campaign for Liberty

1. Department of Defense. “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country”. December 31, 2008. [PDF] [↩]
2. “U.S. Says Rendition to Continue, but With More Oversight”, by David Johnston, published in the New York Times on August 24, 2009. [HTML] [↩]
3. “Renditioning Under Obama”, by Anthony Gregory, published on the Campaign for Liberty blog on August 24, 2009. [HTML] [↩]
4. “Iran Sanctions are a Precursor to War”, by Ron Paul, on December 28, 2009 in the Times Gazette. [HTML] [↩]