03-03-2022

thurSdaY, March 3, 2022
4
Can Iran and US breathe life into nuclear deal?
Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam
e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com
Thursday, March 3, 2022
Tormented by rising prices
Rising prices is now the subject of worried conversation everywhere.
Complete strangers when travelling together to a common destination
usually discuss the weather. Not anymore. Even between strangers, in
many cases these days, the first talking point turns out to be prices of basic
commodities - such as prices of the rice they must consume daily or the prices
of other kitchen items.
Two consequences in the main are noted from the rising prices. Firstly, the
price escalations have much increased the costs of living agonies of ordinary
people. The poor and the extreme poor comprise nearly half of the population.
Understandably, price increases tend to have the most unhappy effects on
them and this is more the case in the present price rises as prices of mainly
common but indispensable consumption items of the poor are rising. Thus,
the purchasing power of the poor is getting eroded. If the present conditions of
high prices persist, then the poor will be the poorer and poverty's pangs will
deepen in the country.
Besides, even in their poor state, the poor, when they are blessed with
relatively stable or improved purchasing power, they create demand for a large
number of goods and services beyond food and other basic things. The
production and marketing of these not so essential products then help to create
employment and income for people or the economy grows in the process. But
with their purchasing power getting badly battered, the poor or common
people are unlikely to demand such non essential items in good quantities and
hence a slump in their production can be expected with sorry consequences of
the same on their producers and sellers. Thus, overall deepening of the poverty
situation, worsening unemployment and economic stagnation are likely to be
the fallout from the unabated price rises of essential products.
One reaction to the rise in prices can be reduction of consumption . Such a
reaction may even lead to decrease in prices as sellers then respond to
consumer reaction by lowering prices in their bids to fast dispose off stocks of
goods with them. If goods do not sell at a brisk pace, business turnover declines.
But in the current price increases, this strategy of foregoing consumption to put
pressure on the sellers cannot apply for the simple reason that most of the
higher priced goods are considered as essential items by common people.
Thus, even the poor cannot postpone or reduce consumption of flour, rice,
cooking oil and other kitchen items as these are their basic consumption items.
A poor man confronted with the choice of buying a shirt or eating a square
meal, will likely decide to buy only food or food preparation items in
unchanging quantities no matter what the price. He might decide to forego
consumption of a new shirt but he is most unlikely to buy less rice or flour or
cooking oil because the costs of these are higher. People seem not to hesitate to
even, beg, borrow or steal, as the saying goes, to meet the needs of basic
sustenance in the form of food. Sections of businesses --dealing in essential
consumer products-- understand too well this psychology or vulnerability of
the consumers and have decided to exploit it to the utmost to squeeze out
supernormal profits.
Therefore, it needs no stretch of the imagination to realise the sufferings of
poor consumers. Even the middle classes, specially the lower middle classes in
urban areas-- who would be considered to have an existence above the poverty
line -- are getting affected by the price increases. The incomes of most middle
class families are limited in nature and family managers are finding their
backs to the wall trying to balance their budgets with their modest or static
incomes.
All concerned quarters are clanging their bells hard for the government to sit
up and hear the noises they are making to give them relief from price rises. But
so far, the response has not been proportionate to the outcry. Government
must demonstrate its adequate responsiveness to a demand which is central
to the needs of people and also in the vital interest of the economy.
There have been good sides to the economy's management in recent years
and the same were discussed appreciatively in the national press. Stable and
increasing foreign exchange reserve, better collection of revenues, rising
investment rate, etc., were in focus as the features of a resurgent economy. But
common people understandably have not so much interest in these macro
economic indicators. For them, the main down to earth concern is the cost of
essentials or daily consumables and the charges they have to pay for various
regular and unavoidable services. In other words, the costs of living for
common people is a very vital issue and government's creditable activities in
other spheres of the economy may be secondary to common people with costs
of living seen as their comparatively higher concern.
The Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB) in its last stock taking
assessed that percentage increase of costs of living was well over the double
digits . Food prices that have a way of creating the justification for increasing
the prices of other commodities and services have been on the higher side all
throughout 2021. Besides, several increases in the charges of power, gas and
fuel oil also helped to raise production costs which in turn led to higher prices
and charges respectively of products and services. House rent, costs of
education, medical charges, etc., also rose notably. The higher price trends and
rising costs of living thereof remain unabated .
Government does not have a direct role to play in regulating prices these
days. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina referred to this aspect in her address to the
nation on last Monday. She drew attention to the rule that under the market
economy principles the country currently follows, there is no way for the
government to intervene so much in the market mechanisms. Prices are to be
left to the free play of market forces or the forces of demand and supply. This
must have been her implied contention. She also drew attention of countrymen
to tax rebate and duty reductions provided by her government to businesses
for the latter to pass on the benefits of the same to consumers in the form of
lower prices.
But free market principles in many countries are not meant to be freestyle
operation of traders or sellers. Government in these countries take steps
against undue profiteering. But this has not been the case in Bangladesh.
Government is seen as rather motionless as traders increase prices without any
justification for the same. Apart from words of advice to traders, government
seems to have no effective strategy in place as prices of goods get most
unreasonably increased by substantial margins and the high price lines are
retained.
The rate of inflation was very recently assessed to be nearly 8 per cent even
by official count, surpassing the previous five-year high at 7.92 per cent.
Independent and more reliable estimates of inflation are considerably higher
. Consumers of the more numerous humble category with limited purchasing
power in the country have been feeling the heat of substantially increased
prices of essential commodities. Prime Minister in her recent address to the
nation also sought to underline that one ought not to look at only price rises but
also take into account the rising purchasing power of the people to offset the
effect of price rises. But one wonders where from she got a clue in respect of the
higher purchasing power of common peopled when that power has diminished
substantially from rising prices and charges. No honest assessment will be able
to quite establish that there has been a general increase in the purchasing
power of poor people to even match or keep pace with the higher prices not to
speak of higher purchasing power enjoyed by them above the price increases.
The free market philosophy is ascendant in Bangladesh. But free markets are
found not devoid of regulatory attempts on the part of governments elsewhere,
specially when the same relate to goods regularly consumed by common
people with modest purchasing power. The market behaviour on the part of
traders clearly point to their illegal and unethical profiteering instincts.
Investigations from the media and other responsible sources drew the
attention of the government many times to deliberate hoarding and related
activities by a section of so called business operators to rake in unearned super
profits at the expense of the miseries of common people. Market economy
principles do not prohibit actions against hoarding and profiteering or the
application of the laws of the land in such cases. However, so far, no application
of these laws have been noted although their skilful application would not be
unjustified under the present conditions.
There has been also regular pleading in the press and elsewhere to revive
government's own extensive sale of essential goods at fair prices to take the
wind out of the sales of profiteers and hoarders. Full revitalisation and
operationalisation of the state owned Trading Corporation of Bangladesh
(TCB) was suggested to this end. Government has only very recently gone for
half-hearted revival of TCB operations when it should have allowed full scale
resumption of its operations, long ago, to defeat the aims of the price
manipulators.
This photo released on November 5,
2019, by the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran shows centrifuge
machines in the Natanz uranium
enrichment facility in central Iran. Iran
announced it had started gas injection into a
30-machine cascade of advanced IR-6
centrifuges in Natanz complex. Photo:
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran
The possibility of the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -
the Iran nuclear deal - being revived, though
difficult, seems to have brightened in
February. The US may now also believe that
the potential loss of Russian natural gas and
oil due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war
needs to be offset by Iran returning to the
global oil market.
The nuclear deal could have been
accomplished much earlier if not for the Joe
Biden administration's unwillingness to
commit to the "way forward" offered by Iran
to stay in the deal for the remainder of
Biden's term as president, according to
Responsible Statecraft.
Former US President Donald Trump
pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in
May 2018 on the premise that he could get a
better deal than the one negotiated by his
predecessor Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, faced with the current reality
relating to the situation on the ground,
which shows Iran is unlikely to give up its
missile capabilities or pull back from
regional allies, Biden seems to have come
around to the original deal.
Iran is unlikely to remove the more
advanced centrifuges it now possesses and
uses after the Trump administration
unilaterally pulled out of the deal. Neither is
Iran likely to get an assurance that Trump or
a future US president who follows his lead
on foreign policy will not abandon the deal
again after the 2024 presidential election in
the United States.
The rest of the world is thus forced to live
in an era in which the United States, the
strongest military and economic power, is
no longer capable of committing to treaties,
whether on global warming or the nuclear
deal with Iran.
Washington was not alone in its
foolishness of pulling out of an agreement
like the Iran nuclear deal that sought to
impose the most stringent restrictions any
country had accepted on its nuclear
programs.
It was egged on, if not instigated, by Israel,
which wanted the United States to do what it
could not: remove the possibility of Iran
developing nuclear weapons and defang its
missile capabilities.
As most technologies required for nuclear
weapons or missiles are dual-use, these
Russian President Vladimir Putin
enters a hall before a meeting with
members of the Security Council via a
video link in Moscow on February 25, 2022
[Alexey Nikolsky/Kremlin via Reuters]
If it was not plain before, Vladimir Putin's
war on Ukraine and Ukrainians has
revealed these self-evident truths.
Columnists who, like me, flit, like
butterflies, from one "crisis" to the next, one
"outrage" to the next, one "scandal" to the
next, do not matter.
Analysts and ex-generals appearing on
cable news networks to speculate without
knowing do not matter.
The usual lineup of "think-tank"
strategists and "experts" appearing on cable
news networks to blabber on and speculate
without knowing do not matter.
Rich, vacuous television personalities
who know nothing about loss or sacrifice in
the midst of war do not matter.
The keyboard cavalry of smug,
perpetually wrong hypocrites who once
loved "regime change" and invading
sovereign nations before hating "regime
change" and the invasion of another
sovereign nation populated, this time, by
white Christians, do not matter.
Pedestrian, duplicitous politicians and
diplomats who spout banalities about
"geniuses", "freedom", and the sanctity of
"territorial integrity" and "international
law" do not matter.
All of the above who stampede to Twitter
every other moment to share their trite,
hyperbolic musings and "insight" about
Putin, war and Ukraine may think they
matter, but they do not.
People matter. Ukrainians matter and,
oh, how they matter.
The countless victims of Putin's war -
dead, injured, homeless and traumatised
Ukrainians - matter.
Still, Ukrainians have shown, by their fine
example, how courage and defiance matter.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy has, by his honourable example,
confirmed that true leadership and sacrifice
matter.
Zelenskyy has, by his honourable
example, confirmed, as well, that simple
words and acts of refusal matter.
Enlightened Russians who defy thugs and
restrictions would have converted Iran to a
second-class industrial power.
A set of Israeli military experts have now
come out saying that asking the United
States to pull out of the Iran deal was a huge
blunder, and the best course for Israel now
would be to work to reinstate the nuclear
deal. A report published in January by Ben
Armbruster in Responsible Statecraft, a US
website on international affairs, says: "The
head of Israel's military intelligence agency,
Major-General Aharon Haliva, has said that
the revival of the Iran nuclear agreement
would be better for Israel than if it were to be
allowed to collapse entirely."
If Iran had succumbed to the United
States and Israel's demands, it would have
given the Western powers complete military
control over West Asia, including its oil. This
would have been in line with former US
President Jimmy Carter's 1980 declaration -
the Carter Doctrine - that the Persian Gulf
region was of vital interest to the United
States, and the US would brook no
interference of any outside power in this
region.
The Carter Doctrine was similar to the
neocolonial Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which
declared that no foreign power could have
any military presence in the Americas, the
United States' backyard.
Trump's reimposition of more than 1,000
sanctions on Iran after walking out of the
nuclear deal was a heavy economic blow for
Iran. It was complemented by covert attacks
on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, which
included the sabotage of nuclear facilities
and the assassinations of nuclear scientists
in Iran. Major-General Qasem Soleimani,
the head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps' Quds Force, was assassinated
along with Iraqi militia commander Abu
Mahdi al-Muhandis in a US drone strike in
Baghdad in 2020.
Iran's response to these sanctions and
attacks has been equally forceful: The
country struck US bases in the region in
January 2020 using missiles, continued
supporting the Lebanese political-militant
group Hezbollah and the Syrian government
forces and continued to exert its influence
over Iraq.
After a prior warning to avoid casualties,
Iran's strikes on US bases showed America's
In Ukraine, Putin is bound to lose
intimidation to oppose war matter.
Kind, generous people who comfort and
help frightened strangers fleeing war
matter.
All refugees escaping the war, including
African children, women and men who,
shamefully, have had, again, to withstand
racism even at this dire moment, matter.
Intrepid (not racist) reporters risking
their lives to tell the truth about what is
happening in Ukraine and beyond, matter.
Angry people who have come together in
the streets across the globe - even in placid,
"neutral" Switzerland - to denounce and
reject war and, instead, call, as one, for
peace, matter.
For the little it may be worth, I do not
know what will happen in Ukraine in the
days ahead.
I do not know what will happen in Russia
in the days ahead.
I do not know what Putin may or may not
do in the days ahead.
I do not know whether or not Putin's mad
plans for Ukraine have gone awry.
I do not know what may or may not be in
store for a troubled world in the days,
weeks, months and years ahead because of
Putin's war on Ukraine.
But I do know this: Putin will not prevail.
Time and people of good and determined
will shall not let him prevail.
History tells us that fear and force, as
governing tools, inevitably lose their
potency. History also tells us that
understanding the value and necessity of
patience is key to beating the purveyors of
fear and force.
I remember when, not too long ago, the
columnists, the experts, the analysts, the
strategists, the generals and the politicians
were flummoxed to the point of shocked,
and welcomed, silence when the Berlin Wall
came down - bit by bit, brick by brick, slab
Prabir PurkaYaStha
andrEW Mitrovica
so-called anti-missile batteries are toothless
against Iran's latest missiles. Iran was
careful not to cause deaths, nor did it hit US
Navy ships in order not to start a war.
But its asymmetric war capabilities
showed that US and Israeli strategic assets
in the region were now within Iran's missile
range, and anti-missile batteries could not
protect these assets.
I have previously written about Iran
developing asymmetrical warfare
capabilities and the ability to use missiles,
drones and small naval boats to strike
opponents. Supplying Hezbollah and other
groups in West Asia such as Ansarullah or
the Houthis in Yemen with these kinds of
Yemen's infrastructure has been destroyed; the country
has dealt with a cholera epidemic and faced a water crisis
with no access to safe drinking water, and its schools, colleges
and health care facilities have been destroyed by
sustained Saudi and Emirati bombings.
technology has helped Iran vis-à-vis Israel
and Saudi Arabia.
The Houthis have shown they may suffer
heavy losses against the militarily superior
Saudi and the Emirati (UAE) forces, but
they have missile capabilities to strike back.
With Yemen, the argument of Houthi
attacks hitting civilians rings hollow, as the
Saudis and Emiratis have inflicted the most
savage attacks on civilians that the world has
seen in a very long time.
Yemen's infrastructure has been
destroyed; the country has dealt with a
cholera epidemic and faced a water crisis
with no access to safe drinking water, and its
schools, colleges and health care facilities
have been destroyed by sustained Saudi and
Emirati bombings.
Yemen's only recourse has been to hit
back at Saudi and UAE facilities - refineries
and airports - hoping to force them into
peace talks and settle the war.
Trump and the Israeli leadership had
assumed that the economic reverses of the
sanctions would drive Iran to surrender its
independent strategic nuclear role. Iran
initially refrained from breaching the
JCPOA agreement and asked the other
signatories, Germany, France, the United
Kingdom, Russia and China, to continue
trading with it.
Apart from China and Russia, the
European countries who were part of the
agreement gave "lip service" to continuing
with the JCPOA and reduced their trade
with Iran to a trickle. With the dollar
functioning as the international currency, no
other European country was willing to buck
by slab.
People who had crossed the fear barrier
into wild celebration of the destruction of all
that the Berlin Wall stood for did what was
considered, until then, impossible.
It was people - lots of them - who achieved
the impossible. They overwhelmed an
inhumane regime built on fear and force
that the columnists, analysts, strategists,
generals, and politicians insisted would last
for much longer than it did.
That fear and force were dispatched in
Berlin so quickly was proof that when fear
and force are challenged by enough people
seized with will and hope, change comes.
And, sometimes, it arrives fast and
i remember when, not too long ago, the columnists, the
experts, the analysts, the strategists, the generals and the
politicians were flummoxed to the point of shocked, and
welcomed, silence when the berlin Wall came down - bit
by bit, brick by brick, slab by slab.
unexpectedly.
Ukrainians, in and out of uniforms, have
seized on and demonstrated this will and
hope with a stirring and humbling
conviction.
They have rallied to their leader's call to
confront fear and force with will, hope and,
yes, weapons. They have confronted fear
and force with every means that a righteous
resistance permits.
Ukrainians are not "hanging on". They are
standing fast. They are testament, once
more, that fear and force will always lose
out.
Nazar Cherniha is one of the countless
Ukrainians who are standing firm. After
watching a Russian missile slam into an
apartment in Kyiv, Cherniha told the
Washington Post: "After tonight I am not
scared anymore. Fear disappeared." His
mother, Nataliya, is just as defiant. "The
people have really come together, and such
a unity can't possibly be defeated."
She is, of course, right.
Putin may have calculated that
Ukrainians would cower and capitulate and
that the rank, Soviet-style rhetoric meant to
smear a freely elected government as a
the United States sanctions in any serious
way.
This is where Iran started to ratchet up its
nuclear enrichment, both in quantity and
quality: how much uranium-235 it would
enrich and to what degree of purity. The Iran
nuclear deal had the following key features:
Iran's active centrifuges would have to
come down to about 5,000 from the more
than 19,000 centrifuges it had.
Uranium enrichment was capped at 300
kilograms at 3.67% purity.
No advanced centrifuges would be used
beyond IR-1 and Iran would have to
dismantle/mothball more advanced
centrifuges. Iran would have to modify the
Arak heavy reactor that could produce
weapons-grade plutonium and convert it so
it could be used for peaceful purposes.
At the time of the agreement, Iran had
stockpiled about 200kg of 20% enriched
uranium gas (200kg of uranium gas would
be 133kg of solid uranium), which was
shipped out to Russia.
In terms of nuclear-weapons
development, converting uranium to 20%
purity is nine-tenths of the work required to
reach weapons-grade uranium of 90%
purity. The bulk of the work involved in
building these weapons is therefore in
achieving 20% purity, and the rest is
relatively easy.
In centrifuges, uranium gas is spun to
separate U-238, the heavier isotope of
uranium, from U-235, which is lighter and
the fissile isotope used in the development of
nuclear weapons. The separation is done by
using a cascade of centrifuges and repeating
the process continuously.
This process is time- and energyconsuming
and requires a high degree of
automation. In Natanz, Iran, the Stuxnet
malware and a cyberweapon developed by
the United States and Israel were used to
destroy more than 10% of Iran's centrifuges
by attacking its Siemens controllers.
This attack was the first use of a
cyberweapon in the world.
In November 2021, the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran said its stockpile of
20% enriched uranium had reached more
than 210kg, and 60% enriched uranium had
reached 25kg. The country also has put in a
new generation of more advanced
centrifuges and efficient IR-2m, IR-4 and
IR-6 centrifuges.
This capability is why there are arguments
that Iran has reached breakout capacity as it
has enough fissile material for a bomb and is
more advanced in its bomb-making ability
than it was during the original JCPOA as a
consequence of Trump's folly.
Source: Asia times
"junta" filled with "criminals" and "drug
traffickers" would work. If he did, he has
miscalculated - badly.
This so-called "student" of history has
forgotten the sharp lessons of recent
history.
It is easy to succumb to distorting hubris
and the irresistible impulse to invade and
impose your evangelical designs on another
people and their homeland, but it is much
more difficult to enforce those designs
without sinking, eventually, into quagmire,
retreat and defeat.
That is why, I think, Putin and his
surrogates have been reduced to shouting
clichés and revisionist nonsense and
making apocalyptic threats that suggest that
Russia's leader-for-life has slipped into a
dangerous and disconcerting hysteria.
Time, will and hope will change that, too.
We are watching it stir in Moscow and other
Russian cities. Principled Russians
continue to risk their freedom or worse
despite Putin's fear-and-force-fuelled edicts
that they remain quiet and at home.
Undeterred, they are on the street. We
owe these brave Russians our support and
gratitude for their fidelity to hope over fear,
to humanity over inhumanity, to peace over
war.
Meanwhile, one marquee and habitually
wrong American columnist who once
championed fear, force and "regime
change" in the Middle East and Afghanistan
and now opposes it when a European
nation is the target, recently wrote that the
world-wide-web may turn out to be
Ukraine's salvation.
Wrong again.
The worldwide web is a tool. It is how
people of goodwill and purpose - inside and
outside Ukraine - use it to battle fear and
force that may play a part in writing the
country's fate.
Ukrainians, I suspect, do not need
Twitter, Facebook, TikTok or Instagram to
fight for their dignity, freedom and
independence.
It is apparent to me, at least, that the will
to meet an occupying army head-on is
engrained in Ukrainians' minds, hearts, and
souls.
Source: Al Jazeera