Thank you.
From what I've heard, the thesis has been put forth that in dealing with the serious problems we are facing with respect to Iran—its threats to international peace and security, its government's threats against the state of Israel, and its nuclear weapons development program—we should rely solely on the goodwill of the Iranian people to put limitations on the Iranian government to ensure that either it doesn't proceed along any of these lines, or if it does develop nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons capability, the goodwill of the people of Iran will act as a sufficient constraint on the government to stop it from ever posing these threats to international peace and security. Frankly, I don't buy that thesis.
Sanctions aren't meant to hurt people; sanctions are meant to influence government policies. Sometimes people are hurt, and that is an unintended, and sometimes very tragic, consequence. Someone cited the 500,000 children who died in Iraq. A number of children did die in Iraq. They didn't die because of the sanctions; they died because of the acts of Saddam Hussein and the way in which he responded to the sanctions. The Ahtisaari report ensured that all humanitarian goods, foodstuffs, civilian items, and medical equipment were always available to Iraq. It was Iraq who chose not to buy them with the funds available to it under the oil-for-food program, but rather to build palaces, to re-arm itself surreptitiously, and to re-fortify a number of its concerns. So sanctions aren't really the cause. It was the way in which Saddam Hussein responded to them, I think, that was the cause.
But sanctions do cause harm. They put pressure on people; they put pressure on institutions. They need to be wisely applied, and they can be wisely applied to affect those entities and individuals who are the key supporters, the financial supporters, of this regime. At the same time, they can be used to help convince the people on the street that the regime is not acting in their interest and that they need to do more.
I think the situation in Iran is a little closer to the situation we saw in Serbia than it is to the situation we saw in Iraq. In Serbia we had a leader, Mr. Milosevic, but we had also certain democratic institutions and people in Serbia who were affected very harshly by the sanctions and who in turn were motivated by those sanctions to dispose of Mr. Milosevic and to turn him over to The Hague.
I think the pressure from the people and the threat to the regime itself that will come from that—by targeting the regime itself and by instituting further pressure on the part of the people against that regime—may well create enough of a risk factor for the regime that it will recognize it needs to change its policies. I don't think we have time to wait until the long term, when we see this new generation of Iranian youth—and maybe the next one—come to maturity and eventually influence the situation. By then, too many drastic situations and crises may have developed.
Thank you.