Continued Sanctions Regime Might Be Key to Containing Post-War Iran

If Operation Epic Fury ends in a ceasefire agreement that includes the removal of sanctions, the Islamic Republic will be unlikely to change its threatening behavior in the Middle East and beyond. While American and international sanctions on Iran were always porous, they had an impact: They were far from the only reason the regime was unable to provide most basic necessities for Iranians. Corruption, cronyism, and incompetence were just as crucial. Yet they allowed Tehran to excuse its shortcomings. Some in America, and even more in Europe, accepted such excuses. The people of Iran, though, knew better. Regime hatred triggered several rounds of protest that swelled after last June’s 12-day war. A popular uprising was then cruelly crushed in January, when tens of thousands Iranians were mowed down by gunmen. On paper, conditions for a popular uprising are helped by the war. A large portion of Tehran’s ruling elite, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, has been killed in targeted American and Israeli strikes. Enforcement instruments — Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Basij, and police — have also been hit as part of the war strategy. Yet post-war prospects for overthrowing the regime remain bleak. “Once the drones stop buzzing and there’s no military action, don’t expect Iranians to take action against the regime,” a prominent activist and journalist, Masih Alinejad, tells The New York Sun. “First priority will be to assess the damage done as a result of the war.”The IRGC, which essentially runs the country, “will be even more determined to put down any popular uprising,” Ms. Alinejad predicts. “This is existential for them. The regime sees the war and its aftermath as a fight for survival, and it fears internal uprising most of all.” The ability of the regime to end an uprising will improve significantly if sanctions are removed as part of a war-ending agreement, dissidents say. If the regime ever agrees to come to terms with America, though, sanctions removal will top its demands. Iran should “take the win,” a former foreign minister who is more popular in the West than at his own Tehran, Javad Zarif, writes in the pages of Foreign Affairs. Tehran, he writes, could “offer to place limits on its nuclear program and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions — a deal Washington wouldn’t take before but might accept now.”Mr. Zarif is reportedly close to President Massoud Pezeshkian, who has expressed frustration at being sidelined from the regime’s decision-making process. Despite his — and Mr. Zarif’s — lack of influence, the hope for ending sanctions unites all ruling factions at Tehran. As of this writing, attempts at reaching an agreed path to a ceasefire between Tehran and Washington seem to have reached a dead end. Yet will President Trump, who since his first White House term has made “maximum pressure” central to his Iran policy, eventually agree to drop that key pressure tool if it allows him to declare victory in the war?“Deals that offer Iran sanctions relief risk enabling the rebuilding of its military capabilities,” the policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, tells the Sun.Hormuz: Iran Counter sanctionsFearing for its survival, the Islamic Republic effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas travel. Hormuz is also key to sanction-evading oil exports, which are the regime’s principal source of foreign income.“In the weeks leading up to the conflict, Tehran sharply increased crude loadings and offshore stockpiling to cushion the impact of war on its oil trade,” UANI, a top follower of Iran’s illicit oil exports, writes. Throughout the war a “ghost fleet continues to operate actively — loading cargo, transiting the Strait of Hormuz, and heading east toward its primary buyer, China.”If the regime survives the current American-Israeli onslaught, it is likely to make sanctions removal a condition for opening the Hormuz Strait. “An Iranian regime with an eroded nuclear, missile, and terror apparatus will now be seeking to use the Strait of Hormuz as its primary point of leverage against the U.S. and its allies and partners,” Mr. Brodsky warns. “The Strait of Hormuz is the regime’s trump card.”Sanctions: What are they?America, the European Union, and the United Nations have imposed various restrictions on Iran for its violations of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, development of ballistic missiles, regional aggression, and human rights violations.America is using its sway over global financial institutions to remove Iran from the world’s dollar-backed banking system. The EU has imposed its own sanctions in reaction to Tehran’s alliances with Russia in the Ukraine war. Last September the UN Security Council reimposed global sanctions that had been eased under President Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement.IRGC: top sanctioning targetEven before the war, the IRGC had all but taken over the Iranian economy. “There is no meaningful private sector in Iran because the Iranian regime took over all the profitable sectors,” a former strategist at the Department of Treasury who specialized in Iran sanctions, Miad Maleki, tells the Sun.The Trump administration designated the IRGC a terrorist organization in 2019. The EU followed suit in February, after a massacre of Iranian protesters. IRGC officials and assets are targeted for sanctions more than those of any other body in Iran. Violations: Watch DubaiAs the regime’s domination of the economy progressed, “Iranians with talents who wanted to do business in a fair and open market took their businesses to Dubai,” says Mr. Maleki, who is now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Then “the IRGC followed them and exploited them as a way of getting access to foreign financial institutions.”Iran is targeting the United Arab Emirates for missile and drone attacks more than any other country. The Emiratis are now denying entry visas to Iranian visitors, including sanction-evading specialists. Such actions might in the future plug holes that have always existed in the sanctions regime. That is, of course, unless sanctions fall by the wayside if Mr. Trump agrees to a deal with a regime survivor in the mold of Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez. If so, it seems likely that oppression of the Iranian people will intensify and Tehran’s race for a nuclear bomb will eventually resume.

Continued Sanctions Regime Might Be Key to Containing Post-War Iran

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