Cutting the Iran-China Connection
Time for meaningful non-military pressure against Iran is quickly running out. U.S. policy needs to inflict more economic pain now.
Just what will it take to bring Iran’s nuclear ambitions to heel? The past year has seen a dramatic expansion of economic pressure against the Iranian regime by the United States and Europe, all with a single-minded purpose: to ratchet up the costs to Iran of its stubborn atomic endeavor.
Yet Iran’s economy, though undeniably ailing, remains afloat. True, Iranian officials have admitted that their country’s energy trade has constricted by nearly half as a result of U.S. and European sanctions, costing the Islamic Republic around $100 million daily. But the Iranian regime remains defiant and has embraced the idea of fiscal austerity — what the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, terms an “economy of resistance” — as an antidote to Western pressure.
Time, moreover, seems to be on Tehran’s side. Western intelligence sources warn that Iran could have nuclear weapons as soon as a year-and-a-half from now. Yet, according to modeling done by the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Iran’s economic “cripple date” — the moment at which the Iranian regime will need to either cave on its nuclear program or face fiscal implosion — could lie later than that, perhaps significantly so.
As a practical matter, that means that the Iranian regime could well muddle through until the ayatollahs get the bomb. And once that happens, the international consensus about Iran’s isolation will begin to crumble, as sympathetic countries and companies angle for a return to business as usual with Tehran.
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Yet Iran’s economy, though undeniably ailing, remains afloat. True, Iranian officials have admitted that their country’s energy trade has constricted by nearly half as a result of U.S. and European sanctions, costing the Islamic Republic around $100 million daily. But the Iranian regime remains defiant and has embraced the idea of fiscal austerity — what the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, terms an “economy of resistance” — as an antidote to Western pressure.
Time, moreover, seems to be on Tehran’s side. Western intelligence sources warn that Iran could have nuclear weapons as soon as a year-and-a-half from now. Yet, according to modeling done by the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Iran’s economic “cripple date” — the moment at which the Iranian regime will need to either cave on its nuclear program or face fiscal implosion — could lie later than that, perhaps significantly so.
As a practical matter, that means that the Iranian regime could well muddle through until the ayatollahs get the bomb. And once that happens, the international consensus about Iran’s isolation will begin to crumble, as sympathetic countries and companies angle for a return to business as usual with Tehran.
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