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Iran Cites Pain of New U.S. Pressure but Doesn't Bend
(Washington Post) Rachel Chason - Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has conceded that U.S. sanctions have increased prices and cut trade. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has called on the government to address "economic and livelihood challenges." But Iran has survived under some form of sanctions since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. A major stumbling block has been China, which is Iran's top trade partner and unwilling to bend to pressure from Washington. Alan Eyre, a former diplomat who served on the U.S. negotiating team that secured the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, said Iranian leaders often benefit financially from sanctions because they control the means to circumvent them. The Trump administration may also be overestimating the ease with which it can isolate Iran from its neighbors. The UAE, Iran's second-largest trading partner, said Aug. 19 that it was halting all trade ties with Iran because of Iranian targeting of UAE tankers. But Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said it is hard to imagine countries such as the UAE "just turning a switch, and turning off decades and decades of economic integration."