Are Iran sanctions turning the population against the U.S.
Brookings' Djavad Salehi-Isfahani reports from Iran:
Sanctions are slowly transforming Iran from a country with an expanding middle class and a rising private sector into a country with a shrinking middle class and private sector. Financial sanctions have placed private firms at a disadvantage relative to government-owned firms in making global transactions. Where the private sector withdraws, the state is often ready to move in.More severe sanctions will go beyond hurting the private sector and threaten the living standards of the middle class. As basic services deteriorate, and the shortages and long lines that were common sights during the Iran-Iraq war reappear, the government will once again become not the source but the remedy to their problems.
The sanctions will do much to undermine the belief among Iranians about the benefits of the global economy. Such beliefs are what distinguish India from Pakistan.
It would be grimly ironic, to say nothing of counterproductive, if the sanctions applied against Iran not only failed to stop their acquisition of a nuclear weapon, but wound up entrenching the current regime and turning the population against the United States. But that is what happened in Iraq (absent the nuclear weapons) in the 1990s.
