Iran defiant over new sanctions

There are dark days ahead for Iranians,
and “they have only their regime to
blame,” said The National (United Arab
Emirates) in an editorial. The Trump administration
this week reimposed punishing
sanctions on Iran’s oil, shipping, and
financial sectors, penalties lifted by the
2015 international deal that offered sanctions
relief in exchange for Tehran limiting
its nuclear program. “This could have
been avoided.” The nuclear deal, signed
by former U.S. President Barack Obama,
freed hundreds of millions of dollars for
Iran’s government. But instead of investing
that money in public services and infrastructure, Tehran used
it to support Houthi rebels in Yemen, the bloodstained regime of
President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbollah militants in Lebanon,
and Shiite radicals in Iraq. President Trump wisely pulled
the U.S. out of the flawed nuclear pact in May and by reinstating
the sanctions is forcing Iran to make a choice. Tehran can “either
abandon its destructive behavior,” Trump said, “or continue
down the path toward economic disaster.” And Iran is facing disaster:
Its currency, the rial, has lost 70 percent in value this year,
while food prices have climbed nearly 50 percent.
“The Don Quixote in the White House has committed another
blunder by imposing illegal sanctions on Iran,” said S. Nawabzadeh
in Kayhan (Iran). A glimpse at the past four decades of
conflict between the U.S. and our Islamic Republic shows that
“Iran has vanquished the U.S. at every turn.” We saw off the
U.S.-backed tyrant Saddam Hussein during the 1980–88 Iran-
Iraq War, and we overcame U.S. sanctions
that tried to stop us from mastering
ballistic missile technology and the
nuclear fuel cycle. This new offensive
will likewise come to naught. Fearful
of confrontation, the cowardly Trump
administration has exempted eight
major buyers of Iranian oil— including
China, Turkey, and India—from
the sanctions. The European Union,
meanwhile, is creating a new spending
mechanism so that its member nations
can do business with Iran without facing
U.S. penalties. Iran and the world
have together given Uncle Sam such a bloody nose that “no
amount of cosmetic surgery will ever set it right.”
“Trump is indeed living in a fantasy land” if he thinks he can
contain Iran, said John Bradley in The Spectator (U.K.). At this
juncture, nobody but Israel and Saudi Arabia—which has as
much innocent blood on its hands as Iran—is willing to line up
with the U.S.’s “irrational, decades-long anti-Iran vendetta.” And
Trump’s true goal, to spark a citizen uprising against the mullahs,
ignores the history of such efforts, which tend to result in popular
anger directed at those imposing the sanctions rather than at the
ruling elite. Meanwhile, the sanctions will inflict very real suffering
on Iran’s 80 million citizens, said Christian Böhme in Der
Tagesspiegel (Germany). And if unrest results, the hard-line Revolutionary
Guard will move to grab more power, possibly ousting
Iran’s comparatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani. Any
hope of negotiation between the U.S. and Iran will end there.