World Preps For Embargo On Iranian Oil?

From the Wall Street Journal comes word that the US, the EU and key Arab oil producing states are putting plans in place to manage the consequences of an embargo on Iranian oil. Stepping up production and organizing a supply chain could dramatically reduce the effects of a European decision to block imports from Tehran.

Those who portray US hostility to the Iranian regime as the result of some kind of paranoid US-Israel hatred of Islam miss the point. Tehran is pursuing a course that frightens and angers Arabs and Europeans as well. The international pressure for sanctions may or may not be sufficient to change the mullahs’ minds about their nuclear program, but it reflects a very deep and wide consensus that Tehran is on the wrong road. People who agree about little else agree that Tehran needs to be stopped.

The international campaign against the mullahs will continue to build.

Posted in Europe, Iran, Israel & Palestine, Middle East, Quick Takes, U.S. Foreign Policy

http://americandigest.org vanderleun

“…may or may not be sufficient to change the mullahs’ minds about their nuclear program…”

Oh, puh-leaze! At the end of the day it will do absolutely nothing, zero, nada, niente to “change the mullahs minds.” They will have their bomb and that is, as you well know, the whole point of the exercise. Once you have one bomb you can use it to act as the shield for a number of others and even more mischief and mayhem.

I do wish everyone would quit the magical thinking exercise that pretends that any sanctions less than armed intervention from the ground or above is going to make one whit of difference.

It is quite simply a false hope.

I seem to remember many years of “sanctions” in a country near to Iran and also beginning with the letter “I” that were geared to having the ruler of that nation reconsider his policies.

How did that set of sanctions work out?
Luke Lea

Good points.
Kris

“Those who portray US hostility to the Iranian regime as the result of some kind of paranoid US-Israel hatred of Islam miss the point. Tehran is pursuing a course that frightens and angers Arabs and Europeans as well.”

Well then, what we have here is the notorious world-wide Persophobia!
Corlyss

I don’t see how a Western oil embargo will do diddly to Iran when China is prepared to buy up all the oil Iran can produce.Such moves must make the wiley Chinese chortle with delight at the way our high moral tone seems to frequently lead to facial disfigurement.
Nate

Have to agree with Corlyss. What’s an Arab/Western embargo matter if the Chinese (or the Indians) agree to buy the oil. The only similar precedent I can think of was Iraq, where the sanctions did seem to prevent the rebuilding of a nuclear program, but at the price of thousands of starving Iraqis. The sanctions program was also crumbling before the war (Oil for Food).
Hard to see how such a program on Iran, will work better. At best it seems like it might impoverish them to the point where they couldn’t credibly deliver the weapon through conventional means, or put up a credible defense to Western attacks, but who knows.
And if the Pakistanis–with double the population, even worse internal problems, and none of the oil–could afford to have agressively increase their nuclear arsenal over the last few years, why won’t Iran be able to do the same?