Will America Finally Get Tough on Iran? The Myth of Sanctions
Will America Finally Get Tough on Iran? The Myth of Sanctions
Since the early days of the Obama administration, the American Left has embarked upon a path to reward decades of bad behavior by the Islamic Republic of Iran in the futile hope that Iran will become benevolent and cease its warlike actions and intentions toward the West in general and the U.S. and Israel in particular.
Fortunately, President Trump has reversed this course and ended the dangerous nuclear agreement with Iran and appointed John Bolton as his national security advisor. Bolton has perhaps the best record in Washington DC on understanding the threat from Iran.
The Trump administration has also re-tightened sanctions on Iran–and in some cases applied new sanctions that had never been administered in the past. With all that being said, there is still much left to be done, as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas recently pointed out:
“Iran and the threat of a nuclear Iran, I believe is the gravest national security threat facing the United States. And the gravest threat facing Israel. We need to be using maximum pressure…You know right now in the administration there are debates about what maximum pressure means. And indeed, there are folks within some agencies that are resisting where the President and the administration want to go. One of the things I think we need to do is end the oil waivers. End them now. No more oil waivers.”
As futile as the idea of negotiating a nuclear deal with the Ayatollahs seems to sober Americans and our allies today, we must first set the record straight on those policies of the past: America has never had a “tough” policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Even during the days of the Bush administration when the Iranians were arming and training Jihadist insurgents in Iraq and feverishly working on nuclear technology and ballistic missiles, the sanctions on Iran were largely a mirage.
Iran gets the overwhelming majority of its hard currency from oil and gas. If you really want to hit Iran hard, you have to go after its oil and gas industry. That’s something that America has never been willing to do, essentially looking the other way as our allies in Europe, South Korea and Japan continued to fill the ayatollahs’ coffers with euros, yen and won. And of course Red China and Russia have been particularly active in their robust trade with Iran.
—
Read More: Center For Security Policy
Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights