Neocons Worried That Sanctions Might Not Kill Enough Innocent Iranians
antiwar.com / Daniel Luban
01-Jan-2010 (2 comments)

Wednesday’s Washington Post contains a rundown of the Obama administration’s current thinking on Iran sanctions. The bottom line: administration officials are increasingly open to sanctions, but want to find ways to target the Revolutionary Guard and other hardline elements within the regime without inflicting needless suffering on the civilian population. For that reason, the administration shows “little apparent interest in legislation racing through Congress that would punish companies that sell refined petroleum to Iran,” whose brunt would be borne by the most vulnerable segments of the populace. (”Look, we need to be honest about this,” neoconservative foreign policy guru Fred Kagan admitted this spring. “Iranians are going to die if we impose additional sanctions.”)

Even these more finely targeted sanctions appear to be more than the Iranian opposition desires. Spencer Ackerman, in his useful discussion of the Green Movement’s position on sanctions, notes that some elements of the opposition have come to view sanctions that specifically target the Revolutionary Guards in a more favorable light, but it appears that most continue to oppose sanctions in any form. (And of course, it appears that virtually no one in the Green Movement supports refined petroleum sanctions, which opposition leaders have repeatedly denounced.)

But targeted sanctions are evidently not gratuitously destructive enough to satisfy the “bomb Iran” crowd. Thus w... >>>

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MM

Thanks IranDokht

by MM on

Thanks IranDokht for the news.   

If we do not stand up and oppose nut-jobs, those with hidden agenda will run a mock on the hill by pushing ludacris ideas like bombing Iran, Nuking Iran as well as broad sanctions that will hurt the people of Iran for the most part.


Mola Nasredeen

Good and informative article,

by Mola Nasredeen on

IranDokht, thanks for posting it.