Iran sanctions raise questions about info on country data

BRUSSELS, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- European furor over Iran's nuclear program and tightening sanctions on the country have raised new questions about the quality and quantity of information that is influencing the decision-making in the West.

The questions being asked are: Is the information about Iran complete and unbiased? Is the economic analysis sound? Will the sanctions work the way they are meant to? Or will they end up strengthening those in power, as they have done in Cuba, Zimbabwe, Libya under late Moammar Gadhafi, even North Korea?

"If the analysis of a country, is wrong the policy prescriptions are bound to be wrong, too," said a Guardian newspaper analysis by a University of London academic, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam.

"Afghanistan and Iraq are very good examples of that relationship between the absence of sound knowledge on a country and strategic failure," said the article.

In November Britain slapped wide-ranging sanctions on banking with Iran, blocking nearly all economic activity between the two countries.

Iranians retaliated by ransacking the embassy in Tehran. Youth groups in the country disowned the attack, saying it was instigated or inspired by government elements. Britain shut the embassy, expelled Iranian diplomats but stopped short of severing diplomatic ties. France, Germany and the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors in token support for Britain.

Analysts called it a familiar scenario. Every country singled out for international or multilateral sanctions has been able to continue financial operations in Europe via backstreet banks in full knowledge of governments, though public limitations hit businesses, families, students and ordinary citizens.

As British sanctions are soon to be followed by EU sanctions, businesses, research organizations and universities are bracing for huge financial losses.

Iran, meanwhile, has gone elsewhere with its business and is doing very well financially despite many years of sanctions, data from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank indicated.

The World Bank put Iran's economic growth at 3.0 percent in 2010 and the IMF said the country's nominal gross domestic product grew from $330.5 billion in 2009 to $360 billion in 2010.

An IMF team that visited Iran commended the government for early successes with a subsidy reform program, advances in the financial sector and a buoyant stock market.

A U.N. Conference on Trade and Development report said foreign direct investment in Iran increased exponentially from $1.6 billion in 2008 to $3.6 billion in 2010.

Those data suggest another side to the Iran story that is "subdued for ideological reasons," Adib-Moghaddam said in The Guardian article.

He said both the United States and European Union could be "disqualifying themselves from the Iranian market" while "China and Russia say 'thank you.'"

Iran's current trade ties, its thriving exchanges with willing substitutes for traditional Western partners, are increasingly reflected in the diplomatic wrangles over further sanctions against Tehran. Major trade partners China and Russia have resisted West-backed measures or sought to water down sanctions against Tehran.

This week the EU laid out plans for a possible embargo on Iranian oil as it broadened sanctions to target 180 individuals and organizations it linked to the state shipping line and the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the EU suspects of involvement in a covert nuclear weapons program.

Greece raised the first voice of dissent, saying it worried about future oil supplies. Iran exports less than one-third of its oil to EU partners. The EU says it will stop the imports once it finds alternative suppliers, possibly in early 2012.

Many analysts agree that both the furor over Iran's nuclear program and the tightening sanctions have prompted the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stoke up nationalism and become more entrenched.

Aside from the economic realities, Adib-Moghaddam said, prophesies of "the impending demise of the Islamic republic" were "comparable to similar predictions about the downfall of the Castros who have been in power in Cuba for almost six decades now."

He called assessments that the Islamic republic may be collapsing "ideologically opportunistic and remote from the political realities in the country."