The question is: has the Trump administration already made a decision to go to war with Iran, similar to the determination of the Bush administration to invade Iraq in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington?
Predictions are dicey things, and few human institutions are more uncertain than war. But several developments have come together to suggest that the rationale for using sanctions to force a re-negotiation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is cover for an eventual military assault by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia aimed at regime change in Teheran.
As clueless as the Trump administration is on foreign policy, the people around the White House -- in particular National Security Adviser John Bolton -- know that sanctions rarely produce results, and unilateral ones almost always fail.
Sanctions aimed at Cuba, North Korea, Iraq and Libya did not dislodge any of those regimes and, in the case of North Korea, spurred Pyongyang into producing nuclear weapons. Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi were eventually overthrown, but by American firepower, not sanctions.
The only case in which sanctions produced some results were those applied to Iran from 2010 to 2015. But that embargo was multi-lateral and included China, India, and one of Iran's major customers, the European Union (EU). When the U.S. unilaterally applied sanctions to Cuba, Iran and Libya in 1996, the move was a conspicuous failure.
This time around, the White House has made no effort to involve other countries. The Trump plan is to use the power of the American economy to strong-arm nations into line. Back our sanctions, threatens the administration, or lose access to the US market. And given that the world uses the dollar as its de-facto international currency, financial institutions may find themselves barred from using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunications (SWIFT), the American-controlled network that allows banks and finance centers to transfer money from country to country.
Those threats have not exactly panicked the rest of the world. China and India, which between them buy more than 1 million of Iran's 2.1 million barrels per day production, say they will ignore the sanctions. According to Federica Mogherini, the EU's foreign affairs minister, "The European Union is determined to act in accordance with its security interests and protect its economic investments."
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