New financial sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union are making it difficult for Iran to pay for staple food and other imports, causing hardship for its 74 million people with just weeks to go before an election.
Commodities traders revealed this week that Iran has resorted to barter trade - swapping gold bullion in overseas vaults or tankerloads of oil for food - to avoid payments problems in international banks over sanctions.
On the streets of Iran, prices for food in dollar terms have doubled or tripled in recent months.
Iran is close to a nuclear weapon capability. One can only guess at what Ahmadinejad will soon boast about on this issue.
My despair comes from fearing that Iran's nuclear program has too much momentum behind it to stop without war. If we'd squeezed Iran nine years ago like we meant business (and with the recent destruction of Saddam Hussein as a looming threat to others), we might have had enough impact to throttle Iran's nuclear plans (and maybe frighten them into staying out of post-Saddam Iraq).
But no, we fooled ourselves into believing we could talk Iran out of nukes. Now, when few believe that anymore, we hope belated economic warfare will help us avoid either going to war with Iran to stop them or accepting Iran as a nuclear-armed state--and then watch as Arab states go nuclear in response. No Arab state went nuclear in response to Israel's nuclear arsenal. But in response to Iran? Yeah, Arab states (and Turkey) will go nuclear over an actual threat to them.
But when it becomes clear that a military option is also now much harder for us than nine years ago--because Iran's nuclear infrastructure is broader and deeper, and so tougher to wipe out and easier to reconstitute after the strikes, we'll probably figure it is easier to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Have a nice day.
