Newsweek story, via WPR’s Media Roundup, on Iran’s $12B-a-year smuggling market, virtually all of which is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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This truly reminds me of Brezhnevian Russia: where officially everything was banned and unofficially everything could be had, so long as the officials got their cut.
Iran’s legit businesses hate the smuggling, which gets around all the sanctions while their stuff does not.
The usual outcome with sanctions is thus achieved: the elite rich get richer and the ordinary businesses lose out and atrophy–the opposite of a connectivity strategy.
