Iran Is Already a Target of War--Economic War

While officials in Washington battle over British efforts to draw the United States into a no-win attack on Iran that would likely lead to thermonuclear World War III, a form of intense economic warfare is already being carried out against Iran, and the results are already devastating. According to a senior U.S. intelligence source who closely tracks events in Iran, the economy of the country has all-but ground to a halt, as the result of a combination of sanctions and other acts of economic warfare from the United States and parts of Europe, and intense factional warfare inside the country, in which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has virtually taken over and gutted the real economy of Iran. As the result of these developments over the past year, the Iranian government is more dependent on oil export revenue than at any time in its history. An estimated 65 percent of all Iranian revenue comes from foreign oil sales. Thus, any successful embargo of Iran's oil exports— even a 10-15 percent cutback—would have devastating consequences.

The Obama administration's recently signed National Defense Authorization Act contained provisions for new sanctions against Iran's oil sector and its national bank. While these sanctions do not go into effect formally for six months—and Obama has national security waivers—the impact is already being felt. The Iranian currency has collapsed in recent days, triggering sudden hyperinflation because the Iranian economy is dollarized. The price of milk last week doubled. To deal with the hyperinflation, the Iranian government has flooded the market with dollars in the past 48 hours, but people are grabbing up the dollars and hoarding them so, while the collapse of the Iranian currency has been partially reversed, there is no increase in economic activity, and many businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy.

This economic warfare only increases the danger that the Iranians will take some kind of desperate action that gives the British exactly the pretext they need to overcome the resistance to war at the Pentagon and other sane pockets of institutional resistance in the U.S., Israel and elsewhere.

The idea that economic warfare, crippling sanctions, and sabotage operations is a viable war-avoidance strategy is dangerous at best and an insane trigger for war at worst.