美媒分析制裁伊朗与中东地缘变局

Bloomberg Economics has pointed out, if forty seven years of sanctions have not broken Tehran's will, more of the same is unlikely to produce any changes. Kim Ghattas is a contributing editor for Financial Times and the author of the forthcoming book, The Best Kind of American, A True Story of murder war and America's undoing in The Middle East. Kim, I'm pleased to say joins us now. Kim, great to have you with us, and I wanna just ask you about how you think about the potential efficacy of heightened sanctions, different kinds of sanctions, tightening of the screws in the way it seems the treasury secretary has has teased here.

The war has begun. There's been a campaign of bombing. I think customarily, historically, a country would start with severe economic sanctions, ratchet them up as much as they can, and then go to the the military, alternative. Not the case here, and I wonder what difference you think this could make, if any. Great to be with, both of you. Great to be on Bloomberg. Thanks for having me. I would just remind you that, there was an effort to put pressure on Iran economic pressure on Iran last year and at the beginning of this year, which crashed the Iranian currency and pushed people into the street, into the streets of of of Tehran and to the rest of the country.

I'm not saying it was part of a of a plan. I'm not saying that it was, the correct sequencing that they had thought this through within the Trump administration. After all, I I wrote a piece, in the Financial Times saying, there is no grand plan on on Iran, but it's important to remember that the Trump administration has been trying different things, and this kind of pressure on Tehran has been there for a while. Yes.

Then they went to war. They expected a quick collapse of the people flooding into the streets to topple the Islamic Republic. That didn't happen. Now they're back to economic pressure, but also trying to neutralize Iran's leverage by bypassing the Strait Of Hormuz. We're seeing all these different players in the region also working to bypass the Strait Of Hormuz. And I wanna say one thing because I I thought a lot about Iran and The US and the relationship between them over the last forty seven years.

It's true that if something hasn't worked for forty seven years, why would it work now? But the circumstances are slightly different, and that's why it's possible that it could lead to a different result. I'm not predicting the collapse of the Islamic Republic or perhaps an implosion, but it could lead to something different than we've seen over the last forty seven years because there are different elements to the equation, namely the severe weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the, the the the weakening of Iran's regional architecture that it has built over the last four to seven years, including most importantly with the collapse collapse of the Assad regime in Damascus in at the end of, 2024 or '5.

I'm sorry. My my my timelines are all are all over the place. It's okay. We all understand that. Tears of mine. Yes. Yeah. But but it's important to keep in mind that Iran today is operating and trying to survive in a very different environment than it had enjoyed over the last forty seven years. With all that in mind, when you look at the landscape of what could possibly be sanctioned, if you are trying to impact those proxies, the regional network, if that's where you think they could potentially be effective, can you walk us through kind of some specifics of what they might target and what the result might be?

And in the short run, does this mean life gets worse for the average person in Tehran? Life always gets worse first for the people. Right? In Iran, in Syria, in in Lebanon, we've seen it, again and again. Sanctions are a blunt tool, not as blunt as missile strikes, but very blunt. They cannot be applied very in a very targeted way. They affect people generally. The 66% inflation in in Iran at the moment, The currency has collapsed.

There's millions more people unemployed since the beginning of the year, and we've seen these repeated protests in Iran, whether it's about freedoms as we saw in 2022 with the Massar Amini protests or whether it was about economic, conditions at the beginning of this year. If there is a well thought through plan, we'll find out on Monday from, the treasury secretary. I suspect it would be further tightening economic, ties between Iran and the region.

We've already seen The UAE announcing that it's cutting all trade and ties with, with Iran. That, think, will have a big impact. We're looking at the sanctioning of or the the the denomination of Hezbollah in Lebanon as an affiliate of of the IRGC, the Iranian the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran. There's a tightening of the noose around Hezbollah in Lebanon both financially and militarily, and we can talk about that as well.

And, crucially, trying to find ways to cut off the, unofficial ways that Iran still is able to finance its proxies in the region. I'm thinking about the central bank in Iraq, the militias, the Shia militias in in Iraq, trying to find all those, you know, different routes that Iran still uses to feed its its proxies and allies in the region. But the impact on the Iranian people is is great, not only economically, but, of course, they've been through months of war this year and years of oppression by this Islamic republic.

Let's pivot to Lebanon as you suggest. I think we're a week out from the the latest attack that we saw in Southern Lebanon, 11 people killed in two Israeli strikes last Saturday. And you mentioned the news getting tighter around Hezbollah. How do you see all of this playing out? There was a lot of it was a much ballet who talks that took place between Israel and and Lebanon. I I'm I'm curious sort of where you see all of this this headed as you, somebody who's who's paid such close attention to to to this country in particular.

Several points to, to make here. I'll try to be quick. First of all, Israel is not going to make any concessions. Specifically, I should say the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not going to make any concessions, any tangible real concessions before the Israeli elections on October 27. So whatever happens, Benjamin Netanyahu is not gonna give gifts to anyone, including the Lebanese government, which is a real problem for the Trump administration, which is really trying to have a success in The Middle East, and they kind of are focused on Lebanon now.

Mark Curebio, in particular, is hoping that Lebanon can be a success of negotiation of countering Iran's influence of neutralizing Iran's ability to, support groups like Hezbollah in in Lebanon. We're seeing Israel, turn Southern Lebanon, 6% of the territory, 67 villages, 270,000 people, made homeless in Lebanon. That 6% of the territory along the border between Lebanon and Israel is now uninhabitable, and I believe will remain so for the foreseeable future even if those negotiations between Israel and Lebanon come to a positive, you know, outcome like a security, agreement or or a peace agreement even, but I think we're very far from that.

Israel is very clearly creating a depopulated buffer zone along its borders, in Gaza, in Lebanon, and, outside of the territory it already occupies in the Golan Heights in in Syria. I I want to make a point, David, which I think gets lost sometimes in the discussions about how to handle a group like Hezbollah in Lebanon. I don't know what people imagine about what this group is like, how they operate, but sometimes I wonder whether people think they're like guerrilla fighters in the jungle like the FARC in Colombia.

We have to remember that Hezbollah is part of the Shia community. It doesn't represent all of it. I think it represents you know, it is supported by perhaps half or or or maybe even less a quarter. But its members are not all living in the tunnels in Southern Lebanon. They are the air c

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