Iran is by far the most stable and wealthy country among its neighbors, which makes our ability to enforce sanctions on them pretty ineffective. Sure, we can mostly stem the flow of high tech from America and Europe from going in to Iran, but do you think anyone in the 7 countries that border Iran gives a fuck about enforcing US sanctions?
> Iran is by far the most stable and wealthy country among its neighbors, which makes our ability to enforce sanctions on them pretty ineffective
That's entirely false. US sanctions have crushed the Iranian economy, sending inflation skyrocketing and including slashing its oil exports by 85-90%.
Iranian oil exports have gone from 2.7m barrels per day in April 2018 to an optimistic couple hundred thousand now. Reuters reported this Summer that oil exports collapsed to as low as 100,000 barrels per day. So you're saying the US doesn't have an ability to enforce sanctions?
Here's a visual example of it in action (their production figures):
The US can immediately crush Iran's most important economic segment via sanctions.
In October the IMF forecast that Iran's economy would contract by 9.5% for 2019, one of the worst economic outcomes in Iran's modern history. The World Bank's figure came to a 8.7% contraction.
The same IMF report says Iran is suffering 35% inflation. The Statistical Center for Iran says it's 47%.
The riots going on in Iran say it's all broadly true.
Iran is also not the most stable or wealthy nation among its neighbors. They're clearly no more wealthy or stable than Saudi Arabia or Turkey (both of which have their own issues). Turkey for example has a real economy not dependent on oil exports and a $10,000 GDP per capita. Iran's GDP per capita is below Iraq at $5,500. Read that again, Iran's economic output per capita is now below Iraq.
Though I don't think it discredits your overall point, as far as I know, the US and Pakistan (which borders Iran) are allies and the US has given tens of billions in aid since 9/11. When you're getting that kind of a money from a foreign country, the tendency seems to be that you keep toeing the line that pleases the hand that feeds.
They had a nice scam going for them though, you have to give them that. Get $$$ to keep "searching for OBL" somewhere in the wilderness, meanwhile they knew exactly where he was.
