Since the start of the year, mounting concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions has translated into a serious economic offensive on the part of the European Union. Back in January, the European Commission voted on a series of punitive economic measures against Iran, chief among them a pledge by member states to cease imports of oil from the Islamic Republic by mid-summer.
MTN has a corporate responsibility to cease doing business with Iran and colluding with a state sponsor of terror that uses its technology to track, silence and kill its people. The South African government should take immediate action to prevent this abuse of the telecommunications industry.
In the aftermath of the landmark U.S.-India nuclear deal passed in 2008, Washington and New Delhi have deftly navigated the periodic irritants that plague all great power relations.
History, they say, has a funny way of repeating itself.
During the decades of the Cold War, it became something of an article of faith within the Washington Beltway that strategic arms control with the Soviet Union was a key guarantor of global security. This was so despite ample evidence that the intricate “balance of terror” erected between Moscow and Washington as a result of a quarter-century of arms control actually had made America considerably less safe—and that catastrophic crisis had been narrowly avoided on a number of occasions.
Relations between Ankara and Iran had until recently been growing increasingly warm. Expanding trade between the neighbors, including Turkey’s reliance on Iran to meet much of its energy needs, has been a factor -- as has Ankara’s ‘zero problems with neighbors’ foreign policy. However, growing international pressure on Tehran over its nuclear ambitions has been putting strain on ties between Turkey and its neighbor, tensions exacerbated by the two counties’ jockeying for a more prominent regional role in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. As Turkey’s efforts to balance its relations between East and West draw Iranian ire, the benefits of close ties with Tehran are becoming increasingly uncertain.