The Cruelty of Iran Hawks

The American Conservative:

Angelo Codevilla’s recommendations for Iran policy are predictably ridiculous:

The agreement lifted Iran’s economy from its dire state. But the bulk of the new wealth has gone to weapons, foreign adventures, corruption and other inefficient investment bringing little benefit to the Iranian people. Were harsher sanctions to bite now, they might well produce a revolution.

All we need is sufficient courage to impose broad sanctions on a secondary basis. That is: no U.S. entity will be allowed to deal with any entity anywhere that deals with the sanctioned part of Iran’s economy – banking and money transfer, energy, food and all manner of parts for industrial equipment.

The first part of this is not true. Most of what little sanctions relief Iran has received has not gone to those other things, but has been spent on development and infrastructure. It has been a standard hawkish talking point for years that sanctions relief would be a “windfall” for Iran that would be used to fuel destructive policies throughout the region, but that hasn’t happened. Opponents of the nuclear deal have been consistent in misrepresenting what the consequences the deal would have, and they have frequently relied on false and misleading assertions to prop up their extremely weak arguments. Codevilla does the same here.

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