Hack-Hook
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https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/nikki-haleys-astounding-claims-about-iran-164576
some Excerpt from the article
For U.S. officials, past and present, to be professing concern for the stewardship of the Iranian people’s public funds strains credulity.
The specter of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) extending a loan to Iran to assist with the challenges of the coronavirus epidemic has raised objections from many U.S. officials. In an opinion article, Ambassador Nikki Haley argued that the United States should do everything in its power to block the IMF loan based on Iran’s policies in the region. Her arguments in favor of a political response to a public health emergency is typical of Trump administration officials and speak to a broader politicization with the lives of innocent people hanging in the balance. So is this an effort to block funds from an unruly actor or a cynical ploy to use the circumstances created by an epidemic for political gain as Iran has charged?
The Damage Caused by Sanctions
The argument laid out by Haley would be at least somewhat understandable if Iran had neglected public healthcare. But Iran’s healthcare system has been praised by the World Health Organization as one of the strongest in the region and the country’s life expectancy has jumped from fifty-four years to seventy-six years over the last forty years. That is simply not something that would be possible without significant and sustained government investment in public health.
The issue Haley completely neglects is that the damage inflicted by U.S. sanctions, not just on Iranian government finances but on the Iranian healthcare system, is at least an important reason why Iran felt the need to request the loan. I partially addressed these issues in a previous article on Iran’s coronavirus response. But medical researchers from around the world have tracked the negative effect of sanctions on almost all aspects of the provision of healthcare in Iran ranging from cancer care and pharmaceutical scarcity to mental health and antimicrobial resistance. Here are a few examples from just the past year: Researchers in the United States, the Netherlands and Iran concluded that sanctions have harmed the growth of Iranian medical science by denying access to critical laboratory and medical supplies, scientific fora, information sources and even the ability to publish research findings.
Iran and Budgetary Priorities
Some of the arguments made by the ambassador lack proper substantiation. The claim that Iran drained a strategic fund to send the money to Syria is sourced to two publications. One is an obscure Egyptian outlet that attributes the claim to “Iranian media” without citation. The other is an article from the U.S. government’s Radio Farda in which the outlet's “military analyst” makes this claim without evidence or explanation. When arguing that Iran has, in the midst of the outbreak, doubled the budget for the Basij, a military group under the IRGC’s command, she cites an article that explains that President Hassan Rouhani’s revised budget proposal has cut defense and security spending when adjusted for inflation and that the “Basij paramilitary received the most dramatic cut of all; its funding was cut almost in half.”
Iran’s defense spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) was 2.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2019, well within the norm of global defense spending (2.2 percent of GDP for that year). Others have provided higher figures for Iranian military spending but they did so mainly by including the budgets of local police departments as defense spending.
Ultimately, the issue here is not Iran’s expenditure of funds but rather its policies. For U.S. officials, past and present, to be professing concern for the stewardship of the Iranian people’s public funds strains credulity. Iran and its allies are the primary impediments to American dominance in the region behind its own alliance network consisting of Israel and Sunni Arab states. What U.S. officials frequently characterize as “adventurism” or “bad behavior” on the part of Iran is, for Tehran, a vital process of maintaining a viable alliance network and a critical security necessity that can’t be abandoned due to fiscal restraints.
some Excerpt from the article
For U.S. officials, past and present, to be professing concern for the stewardship of the Iranian people’s public funds strains credulity.
The specter of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) extending a loan to Iran to assist with the challenges of the coronavirus epidemic has raised objections from many U.S. officials. In an opinion article, Ambassador Nikki Haley argued that the United States should do everything in its power to block the IMF loan based on Iran’s policies in the region. Her arguments in favor of a political response to a public health emergency is typical of Trump administration officials and speak to a broader politicization with the lives of innocent people hanging in the balance. So is this an effort to block funds from an unruly actor or a cynical ploy to use the circumstances created by an epidemic for political gain as Iran has charged?
The Damage Caused by Sanctions
The argument laid out by Haley would be at least somewhat understandable if Iran had neglected public healthcare. But Iran’s healthcare system has been praised by the World Health Organization as one of the strongest in the region and the country’s life expectancy has jumped from fifty-four years to seventy-six years over the last forty years. That is simply not something that would be possible without significant and sustained government investment in public health.
The issue Haley completely neglects is that the damage inflicted by U.S. sanctions, not just on Iranian government finances but on the Iranian healthcare system, is at least an important reason why Iran felt the need to request the loan. I partially addressed these issues in a previous article on Iran’s coronavirus response. But medical researchers from around the world have tracked the negative effect of sanctions on almost all aspects of the provision of healthcare in Iran ranging from cancer care and pharmaceutical scarcity to mental health and antimicrobial resistance. Here are a few examples from just the past year: Researchers in the United States, the Netherlands and Iran concluded that sanctions have harmed the growth of Iranian medical science by denying access to critical laboratory and medical supplies, scientific fora, information sources and even the ability to publish research findings.
Iran and Budgetary Priorities
Some of the arguments made by the ambassador lack proper substantiation. The claim that Iran drained a strategic fund to send the money to Syria is sourced to two publications. One is an obscure Egyptian outlet that attributes the claim to “Iranian media” without citation. The other is an article from the U.S. government’s Radio Farda in which the outlet's “military analyst” makes this claim without evidence or explanation. When arguing that Iran has, in the midst of the outbreak, doubled the budget for the Basij, a military group under the IRGC’s command, she cites an article that explains that President Hassan Rouhani’s revised budget proposal has cut defense and security spending when adjusted for inflation and that the “Basij paramilitary received the most dramatic cut of all; its funding was cut almost in half.”
Iran’s defense spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) was 2.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2019, well within the norm of global defense spending (2.2 percent of GDP for that year). Others have provided higher figures for Iranian military spending but they did so mainly by including the budgets of local police departments as defense spending.
Ultimately, the issue here is not Iran’s expenditure of funds but rather its policies. For U.S. officials, past and present, to be professing concern for the stewardship of the Iranian people’s public funds strains credulity. Iran and its allies are the primary impediments to American dominance in the region behind its own alliance network consisting of Israel and Sunni Arab states. What U.S. officials frequently characterize as “adventurism” or “bad behavior” on the part of Iran is, for Tehran, a vital process of maintaining a viable alliance network and a critical security necessity that can’t be abandoned due to fiscal restraints.
