Arash Azizi and Graeme Wood
Four months ago, Israel bombed Iran for 12 days, in a campaign whose grand finale was the apparent destruction of three Iranian nuclear facilities in strikes by the United States. Last week, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany decided that bombing was not enough. They triggered the United Nations’ crippling “snapback” sanctions, as American hawks had been demanding for years. Iranian officials had tried to avert these sanctions. When sanctions came anyway, those officials minimized their effect by saying that Iran had survived sanctions before. But these are bringing new kinds of pain. Japan has already suspended dozens of Iranian assets. Even Turkey, traditionally a close economic partner, is complying. The Iranian rial has sunk to a historic low.
The combination punch of berubblement and economic devastation is making Iran desperate. Although it still has options, all of them are bad.
Iran’s previous nuclear strategy was slow-and-steady enrichment of uranium, paired with languorous and protracted negotiation with the United States. It struck a nuclear deal with the Obama administration in 2015, then watched the Trump administration withdraw in 2018. The strategy of negotiation has failed Iran and left it with no bomb, humiliated in battle, and facing immiseration.
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