Stick With Iranian Sanctions to Finish the Job

Despite a checkered past, sanctions have finally brought Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program — but they have not inflicted enough damage on Iran's economy to alter Iran's resolve to achieve nuclear weapons' capability. Now is not the time to relent their pressure.

Initially intended as targeted restrictions against Iran’s nuclear procurement efforts, sanctions have gradually expanded to target Iran’s economy. Their impact exceeded their advocates’ predictions. Within months, oil sanctions brought Iran’s official crude sales down by 40 percent. Financial and banking sanctions depleted Iran’s declared foreign currency reserves and triggereda dramatic depreciation of Iran’s currency. Iran’s car industry, Iran’s second-most-important economic sector, took a 40 percent plunge this year. And a European ban on liquid natural gas technology exports grounded Iran’s ambitions to develop its largely untapped gas sector. Sanctions have hurt so much, that NIGC, Iran’s national gas company, reportedly declared bankruptcy this week.

Sanctions had three key goals: disrupt and delay Iranian procurement efforts so as to slow down Iran’s nuclear program, increase Western leverage in negotiations, and use the growing economic pain inflicted upon Iran’s economy to change the nuclear cost-and-benefit calculus of Iran’s rulers. By crippling Iran’s economy, sanctions have finally convinced Iran to re-engage in meaningful negotiations for the first time since 2004.

But sanctions relief now would be premature.

Iran has not complied yet with any of its international obligations. Its negotiators seek sanctions relief in exchange for reversible concessions that will leave Iran’s nuclear breakout capacity intact. Likely Western concessions would enable Iran to replenish its foreign currency reserves through gold sanctions relief. They would relieve three sectors – petrochemicals, cars and aviation – that are largely controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the Supreme Leader’s business empire.

Thus, the regime constituents least likely to support accommodation with the West and most invested in Iran’s nuclear weapons’ quest will benefit from these measures long before Iran’s nuclear threat is neutralized. Besides, given the dual-use nature of car industry and petrochemical technology, the regime would not only benefit financially, but it could regain access to critical components of the nuclear program it is currently finding hard to procure.

This is the worst possible disincentive for Iran at a time when its military nuclear program is dangerously close to completion.

Sanctions have worked until now – Western leverage has increased; Iran’s cost-and-benefit analysis has changed; its leaders’ willingness to concede has increased. Now is not the time to discard a diplomatic tool that has worked so well – the time for sanctions relief begins when Iran agrees to live up to its international obligations.

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.