'Experts' wrong about Trump's Iran policy

Jonathon Tobin:
When President Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal back in May, the foreign-policy establishment was unanimous in its opposition.

Their dismay was rooted in loyalty to Barack Obama’s legacy and personal contempt for Trump. But there was at least one point the critics made that seemed irrefutable, in warning against the re-imposition of US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports.

Trump’s unilateral move would certainly fail because of the interest of America’s European allies as well as the Russians and Chinese in continuing to do business with Iran. But if by some chance it worked, the experts were sure that would result in a severe hike in oil prices that American consumers would feel at the gas pump.

But the experts were wrong. Reports in Bloomberg News, echoed by The New York Times, tell us that three months into the new sanctions — and less than two months before the Trump administration plans to implement even more far-reaching restrictions on doing business with Iran that will affect US allies — the move has succeeded in crippling Iran’s oil exports without causing a significant increase in oil prices.

Iran’s principal source of foreign exchange is drying up, ratcheting up the pressure on an unpopular despotic regime without Americans having to pay appreciably more for gas.

How is that possible?

The answer is obvious, and it explains why the Obama negotiating strategy — resulting in an agreement that allowed Iran’s rogue state to keep its nuclear program and its ability to eventually create a bomb, while also enriching it — was so wrongheaded. In 2013, Obama relented just when sanctions were starting to bite and what followed was a strategic victory for Iran that brought it victory in Syria as well as a cash windfall to the tune of over $100 billion.

The Obama administration was guided by two critical false assumptions.

One was that the only way to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions, ballistic-missile program or role as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism was to work in concert with US allies as well as Russia and China. Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry were sure that the United States could achieve nothing acting on its own and allowed countries with a greater interest in commerce with Iran than in stopping it to exercise a veto over US policy.

The other assumption was that Iran was too strong to be brought to its knees even by international sanctions. That meant Obama and Kerry saw the only choices available to the West were either war or appeasement.
...
"Experts" have often been wrong about the impact of Trump policies.  Just this week the Stock market hit another all time high and "expert" Paul Krugman had predicted after the election that the markets "would never recover" from Trump policies.   "Experts" also predicted that Trump's policy in dealing with North Korea would lead to a nuclear war, instead it has put North Korea on the road to denuclearization.

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