All the bluster about UN sanctions is just that. They won’t work because:
1. China won’t support them.
2. Russia won’t support them.
3. And even if China and Russia did support them in some watered-down form, the IRI would simply use the sanctions to camouflage their own gross mismanagement of the economy, thereby prolonging the amount of time they can hold onto power.
I bet the IRI is even hoping for sanctions on gasoline imports, so that when they lift the subsidies as planned and the price of gas quadruples, they can blame the US and rally some less-than-committed reformists around the flag. Forget about that last “election”…the West is trying to keep Iran down.
I believe that sanctions can sometimes be effective. And if I thought sanctions would help bring down the IRI, I would support them in a second. But better to do nothing than give the IRI a rallying point by pushing for something that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of coming to meaningful fruition.
