By Robert Dreyfuss
While no doubt painful for Tehran, U.S. sanctions are riddled with exemptions and may be in place mostly to sideline hawks, writes Robert Dreyfus.
Like the fairy-tale Big Bad Wolf, the United States and the European Union continue to huff and puff and say that economic sanctions will blow Iran’s house down.
Referring to new U.S sanctions that can be levied against third-party purchasers of Iranian oil and to the ban, imposed July 1, by the EU against Iranian exports to Europe, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, “Iran’s leaders will understand even more fully the urgency of the choice they face.” Stretching for an historical analogy, the New York Times compared oil sanctions against Iran to the pre-World War II U.S. embargo on oil shipments to Japan, adding, in case anyone forgot, that in response Japan opted to “strike before they were weakened.”
But while the new sanctions will inflict a significant measure of pain against Iran’s already struggling economy, virtually no one in Washington believes that they will compel Iran to make unilateral concessions at the bargaining table over its nuclear enrichment program. And, experts say, Iran can get along fine for the foreseeable future with a little belt-tightening.
Read the full 2 page story at The Diplomat