Richard Goldberg’s* explanation in the NY Times Opinion page of Trump’s “maximum pressure”( (in Trump's Iran Policy )actually makes a strange kind of sense.
Trump is destroying a vital nation’s economy and maybe its political system, even if he isn’t overtly pursuing “regime change,” nor outright war. If Iran is driven to collapse, something worse could spring from the shambles caused by his sanctions levied against almost any financial transaction, including selling oil, or buying refined gas outside of Iran. And the US is doing what it can to make our European partners abide by our sanctions, although they are trying to help Iran continue to abide by the nuclear agreement.
Trump is intent on destroying the joint agreement (JCPOA). He’s argued against multilateral agreements, often, and he wants to force Iran unilaterally to completely foreswear nuclear weapons and to dismantle all nuclear production, except what is necessary for medical purposes. And if sanctions, etc. destroys Iran as a nation, and destabilizes the whole Middle East (looks like it so far), to prevent another nuclear power in the region, won’t that be pretty?
This is not avoiding war; it’s waging a different kind of war, and it’s at least as damaging to Iran’s people as a conventional war. It’s goals are achieved by starving millions, thousands dying for lack of medicine: the result is violence and chaos.
The US under Clinton and Bush did much the same thing to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. And Trump has hugely exacerbated the economic disaster of Venezuela’s government with similar tactics.
Sanctions are a tool of war exclusively available to larger countries targeting smaller ones. It may be more inhumane than outright war, because almost half of the casualties are women and girls and most casualties and deaths are among the old, the young and the poor. Fewer structures are bombed, however.
This looks like the policy of a cruel, deranged real estate tycoon. He doesn’t care about the people, but he doesn’t want to see all those valuable tourist properties destroyed. He could build hotels there!
The only countries that can play this horrible game are the ones with great market power. This is the wealthiest country leaning against smaller, poorer ones. It’s the equivalent of a bully threatening a weakling.
It’s especially advantageous for a realtor, like Trump: look at all of that potentially un-destroyed, valuable abandoned property, some of it even historic monuments, palaces, temples. Think of the possibilities, when the US has starved and killed by untreated disease so much of the population, and reduced the rest to beggars!
Don’t you think an American Realtor could make money on that?
So, Trump’s campaign against Iran makes a lot of sense—if you want to make a (financial) killing in your target country.
* Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, most recently served as the National Security Council’s director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction.