UNITED NATIONS — President Hassan Rouhani of Iran delivered a searing indictment of Western and Arab states on Thursday in his annual speech to the United Nations, blaming them for sowing the seeds of extremism in the Middle East with “strategic blunders” that have given rise to the Islamic State and other violent jihadist groups.
“Certain intelligence agencies have put blades in the hands of madmen, who now spare no one,” Mr. Rouhani said, adding that “all those who have played a role in founding and supporting these terror groups must acknowledge their errors” and apologize.
He also used the occasion to denounce the Western-led sanctions imposed on Iran’s nuclear program and reiterated his government’s desire to resolve Iran’s protracted dispute with the United States and other nations over the program.
He implied that the nuclear negotiations were linked to Iran’s cooperation in combating the Islamic State and its affiliates, saying that no security cooperation was possible until the sanctions were lifted.
“The people of Iran, who have been subjected to pressures especially in the last three years as a result of continued sanctions, cannot place trust in any security cooperation between their government with those who have imposed sanctions and created obstacles in the way of satisfying even their primary needs, such as food and medicine,” he said.Julie Hirschfeld Davis had a small story, "Treasury Imposes Terrorism Sanctions," in yesterday's paper about the U.S. Depart of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designating numerous individuals and a few organizations tied to Islamic State and Nusra, as well as Indonesian jihadis, to be added to its sanctions list.
Hirschfeld Davis constructs her brief piece by culling Treasury's press release, but she one-ups USG by dutifully trotting out at the top of her story the canard that Islamic State is difficult to sanction because its revenue stream is all illicit, principally its sale of black-market oil:
WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed sanctions on 11 people and one entity it said were sending financial and other support to terrorist groups, including the Islamic State. The sanctions are aimed at the funding streams that have allowed the terrorist organizations to flourish and recruit fighters from the Middle East, Europe and North Africa.
The impact of the sanctions is unclear, particularly since the Islamic State largely circumvents the international banking system and traditional commerce, deriving much of its wealth from black-market oil sales, extortion and kidnappings for ransom. But the action is also designed to publicly expose key players in the group, with the goal of isolating them and restricting their access to money and freedom of movement.Prior to Islamic State's attack on the Kurds in August when the the group was racking up victory after substantial victory on the ground in Syria and Iraq and the United States was doing its best to ignore the jihadi blitz, the canard was floated that IS was self-funding based on its control of oilfields in northern Syria and an extensive system of extortion in Mosul and elsewhere. This canard was necessary in order to steer blame away from sponsors among U.S. allies in the Gulf as well as the U.S. covert programs in Jordan and Turkey to unseat the Syrian government.
But as Kemal Okuyan, a member of the central committee of the Communist Party of Turkey, made clear in a post yesterday on the Counterpunch web site ("The Master's Plan: ISIS, the U.S. and Turkey: Are They All Crazy?"), without money and weapons from the Arab monarchies ISIS could not survive:
Let’s us dig in the issue of ISIS a little more. Among the countries who have joined the U.S. led coalition against ISIS, aren’t there some that still finance ISIS? Yes, there are. In case Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan were to stop the flow of money and arms to ISIS, it would not take more than a week for the whole business to be over. However, other than a few symbolic measures, nothing substantial has been done on that front. In other words, the reactionary coalition keeps feeding the organization that they have declared as the “enemy”. Who would believe you after this?Yesterday the United States, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates bombed refineries in the northeastern Syrian provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasakah. Helene Cooper and Anne Barnard in "Warplanes Blast Militants’ Refineries in Syria, Targeting a Source of Cash," point out today the Pentagon's wildly inflated estimates of the value of ISIS's oil revenue:
Officials with the United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said the refineries produced 300 to 500 barrels of oil daily, generating as much as $2 million per day in black-market oil sales for the group’s operations. That estimate is higher than American officials had previously made public, and would put the price around $333 per barrel. Oil sells for about $100 a barrel on the open market.Why do this? Why inflate the value of crudely refined jihadi black-market oil to three-times the market worth? The obvious answer is the one provided by the Okuyan: So that the reactionary coalition can keep feeding the jihadis that they are bombing, making the problem bigger and the war larger.
Why not add the nations publicly acknowledged to finance and provision Islamic State to the Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions list? Cuba, Iran and Syria (along with Russia under the heading "Ukraine-related") are on the list -- and these nations do not attack the U.S. Why not Saudi Arabia and Qatar -- and Turkey, for that matter -- the nations behind Islamic State?
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