Why expanding trade with Iran rather than sanctions will terrify the agents of repression

So, China has overhauled Europe to become Iran’s major trading partner.

Last year official Iranian government figures showed EU trade at $35bn, and trade with China at $29bn. But according to the Financial Times today, those figures ignored the trade that enters Iran through the United Arab Emirates – some $15bn.

In the meantime China’s dependence upon Iranian energy represents 11 per cent of her total energy consumption.

So, at the very moment when the US, France and the UK edge towards a new sanctions regime against Tehran, realities on the ground ensure that China will not go along with them.

Russia reportedly looks a little more disposed to a new sanctions regime, but in truth, the world community should be looking at other routes to relating to the Islamic republic.

As I discovered at Christmas, when I visited Iran and met with Ahmadinejad, there is division, chaos and uncertainty in the upper echelons of power in the Islamic Republic.

It has become a well worn tradition that amid such tensions, President Ahmadinejad likes to play the “nuclear card“. The UN inspectors are bemused by the under use of centrifuges at Natanza (the enrichment plant near Esfahan).

There is also a suspicion that scientists have managed to enrich uranium to a level of 20 per cent and have enough of it to build one bomb, or not. In other words the UN inspection process doesn’t really know precisely where Iran has got to in its bomb making capacity.

I have always believed that this is exactly how the shambles at the top of Iran wants it.

I have always believed that relating to Iran through the nuclear non-dialogue is a blind cul-de-sac. The real problem remains – with whom should we try to relate?

Well, it is still possible to talk with Ahmadinejad, but I could not sense when I met him whether he actually runs anything at all. I suspect he has influence upon much and control of almost nothing.

The real power is supposed to reside with the supreme leader – Ayatollah Khamenei. But he’s made some serious mistakes in the course of attempting to deal both with the electoral fraud and the “green revolution“. There is widespread talk of his having to step down or aside – ill health, or some other pretext.

No, the real power, the real control lies in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards and the thuggish gangs that constitute the Basij.

But they are split too – between the old seasoned revolutionaries who deposed the Shah and survived that ghastly war with Iraq in the 1980’s, and the young upstarts who have seized many of the economic leavers, and enriched themselves in the process.

These new groupings don’t travel outside the country, and are very focused on the mosque. They will be particularly hard to hit with targeted sanctions.

Hence the alternative – engagement – but with whom? Anyone and everyone. Trade, commerce, banking, oil, culture – there are problems with every segment of Iranian life.

But beating beneath all these problems reside a vast numbers of hearts in men and woman who want change.

The Islamic revolution has become deeply polluted according Mr Mousavi – the opposition leader and no radical himself.

Starving the discontented with more sanctions will achieve nothing beyond the beating batons of renewed internal repression. I have advocated carpet bombing Iran with laptops before on Snowblog.

But conceptually that is what the world should do, drench the place with supply. There is a rich and ready market.

Exploiting it will empower the people and terrify the agents of repression.