That does explain my persistent confusion about the hysterical war scare that has gone on over Iran's provocations in the Gulf region.
Despite the war scare talk--and even failed faux legislation to "stop" a war Trump doesn't want--designed to weaken American resolve to isolate terror-supporting Iran, America has little interest in the war option as long as the economic warfare is working. And it is:
Trump-induced decline in [oil] exports has probably cost Iran $120 million a day from oil alone — almost the cost of the US's pricey drone.
For the US, losing a drone is costly and destabilizing but not really a big deal for a country with a $718 billion annual defense budget. In Iran, the currency has crashed, and the country has become gripped by protests and strikes. And it has felt a crackdown on the financial freedom for all of its citizens.
And while American defenders of the Iran nuclear deal are right that Iran's response to sanctions that include hitting tankers is "predictable" (I've long said the same), their lobbying to undermine sanctions and return to the Iran deal makes it seem as if that "predictable" response is actually "justifiable."
We may reach the point where preventing Iran from going nuclear will require a war (and I doubt a war would include an invasion of Iran). But we aren't anywhere near that point given the advantage that sanctions are providing us right now.
If there is to be war (or rather, an escalation of war given that Iran has been at war with America--killing close to a thousand Americans in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq) since seizing our embassy in Tehran in their Shia Islamist revolution), in the foreseeable future it will be the result of Iranian decisions to escape the economic grip around Iran's throat that we have tightened.
It really is amazing that Iran wants to remain non-nuclear so much that it is willing to go to such lengths in cooperation with Democrats in the Great Satan and Europeans to revive the nuclear deal that supposedly keeps Iran from getting nuclear weapons. The deal is a farce that enables Iranian aggression and is really a shield for Iran to go nuclear.
And I would really like to see our government try to use the "snapback" sanctions provision in the deal, given that I think there is no way Russia or China will accept that provision--which essentially amends the UN Charter on Security Council powers--as a legitimate measure not subject to their UNSC veto, if actually confronted with its use.
