Following the US announcment of new sever sanctions on Iran on Monday, TABNAK reached out to Marc Finaud a senior advisor and associate fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) and former French Foreign Ministry spoksman to shed more light on the developments.
Following is the full text of the interview:
Donald Trump, the President of the United States, has announced that on Monday he will impose severe economic and trade restrictions against Iran and its trading partners. Does this mean a shift from military approach to economic pressure?
Economic sanctions have always been used together with military pressure by the Trump administration. The suspension of military strikes and preference given to economic sanctions is a sign that the former approaches have not been effective to achieve Washington's war aims.
Does this campaign mean that the United States is abandoning the military option?
Officially, it will be the case only if Trump obtains through sanctions what he can call a victory. But with this administration's lack of consistent strategy, it is impossible to know for sure. There will always be strong pressure, for instance on the part of the Secretary of "War" or the Netanyahu government, to resume strikes.
It seems that now the fundamental issue at is the resilience of Iran and the United States in the face of this economic war. What is your assessment?
The Trump administration naïvely believes that Iran will collapse or capitulate as a result of this economic war, while Iran has already demonstrated for a long time its capacity to resist sanctions and isolation. Of course, the Iranian economy and population have suffered and will suffer again from sanctions, but history has shown that sanctions rarely reach their goal which is to change the behaviour of the sanctioned country. They end up being only punitive and may even strengthen a country's nationalism.
Do you think such a campaign could force Iran to compromise?
This is all the more unlikely that this package includes so-called secondary sanctions that target countries trading with or investing in Iran. As in the past, those will affect US allies, including in the region, and large countries such as Russia, China, and India with which Trump prefers to maintain good relations.
What impacts could the continuation of tensions have on the U.S. midterm congressional elections?
The US administration and the Republican party realize that the prospects of the mid-term elections look gloomy. This is why Trump has been trying to find a exit to this war that he started includind the re-opening of the Straits of Hormuz, because of its consequences on the US economy, price levels, unemployment, etc. But, by doing so, the US has been giving Iran some leverage to lead to a balanced deal as foreseen in the MoU. This is the only realistic solution to end this war.
