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Source: https://jcfa.org/irans-economic-breaking-point-why-the-west-may-be-missing-a-historic-opportunity/
Iran's Economic Breaking Point
(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Oded Ailam - With Iran's GDP projected to contract by 5.4% and inflation approaching 80%, the Iranian economy is undergoing a collapse. Iran sits atop an ocean of oil and gas, yet its citizens struggle to secure basic calories. Lifting the economic pressure and sanctions will not produce a breakthrough on the nuclear issue. On the contrary, it will funnel billions of dollars directly into the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Washington and the West are now missing a rare and historic opportunity to bring down the regime. The real way to subdue the regime requires a combined strategy: economic strangulation and an information campaign, coupled with quiet but overwhelming civil unrest through widespread labor strikes. With an aggressive information campaign showing Iranian citizens exactly where their money is going, not to them, but to illicit assets hidden in Europe and militias in Yemen and Lebanon, internal combustion becomes inevitable. A civilian general strike neutralizes the principal advantages of Iran's security apparatus - the use of violent force. Unlike overt street demonstrations, there is no one to shoot. When protest moves from crowded streets into closed homes, the tactical advantage provided by guns and batons evaporates. The writer, former head of the Counterterrorism Division in the Mossad, is a researcher at the Jerusalem Center.