> The assessment, which was shared with US government officials late last year, illustrates the extent of the problem facing the Biden administration, which has vowed to shut down Iran’s production of drones that Russia is launching by the hundreds into Ukraine.
In a US with sane foreign policy this would be fairly easy. The US, with backing from Europe, would tell Iran "stop supplying Russia with drones or we are going to put major sanctions on you".
Iran would look back to the sanctions there were placed on them over their nuclear weapons program, which were pretty severe, and remember how when they agreed to stop the weapons program and agreed to international inspections for verification the sanctions were lifted.
They would not want to go back to that, and would know that the US will be reasonable if Iran complies and quickly lift sanctions, decide helping Russia isn't worth going back to those US/EU sanctions, and stop supplying drones.
But we have a US where after the US lifted the nuclear sanctions it changed its mind and reimposed them. So now (A) the US no longer has imposing sanctions on Iran as a tool to persuade them on new issues, and (B) Iran (and everyone else) has no reason to believe the US when it says sanctions over any particular thing will actually be lifted if the sanctioned country makes the changes the US wants.
Not by the Europeans it’s not. When Trump reimposed sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program most of the Europeans pulled out because it looked like everyone but Trump was working in good faith.
Yeah. Trump and the right really fucked America’s ability to negotiate with hostile nations. Not sure how we ever get out of this mess unless we structurally reform our constitution to require more oversight for doing stuff like that.
In a US with sane foreign policy this would be fairly easy. The US, with backing from Europe, would tell Iran "stop supplying Russia with drones or we are going to put major sanctions on you".
Iran would look back to the sanctions there were placed on them over their nuclear weapons program, which were pretty severe, and remember how when they agreed to stop the weapons program and agreed to international inspections for verification the sanctions were lifted.
They would not want to go back to that, and would know that the US will be reasonable if Iran complies and quickly lift sanctions, decide helping Russia isn't worth going back to those US/EU sanctions, and stop supplying drones.
But we have a US where after the US lifted the nuclear sanctions it changed its mind and reimposed them. So now (A) the US no longer has imposing sanctions on Iran as a tool to persuade them on new issues, and (B) Iran (and everyone else) has no reason to believe the US when it says sanctions over any particular thing will actually be lifted if the sanctioned country makes the changes the US wants.