Iran Sanctions Bite Ever Harder

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While Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were busy giving rabble-rousing speeches about how the appeaser-in-chief has been touring the globe apologizing for America and hollowing out our military influence, guess what happened?

Europe slapped a boycott on Iranian oil Monday, signaling that the Islamic Republic’s second-largest market is likely to dry up as part of a U.S.-led sanctions campaign that has already inflicted serious damage on Iran’s economy and sharply increased tensions.

….In the past, Europe often has resisted U.S. efforts to build pressure on Iran. “If you had told me a year or two ago that the Europeans would do something like this, I would have said you were crazy,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a research group in Washington that favors strong sanctions.

….The effect will be amplified by a new round of U.S. sanctions, which, if fully implemented, will prevent companies that do business with Iran’s central bank from dealing with American companies….China says publicly that it will not yield to pressure to give up Iranian oil, but it has reportedly cut back on purchases for January and February and is pushing for discounts.

How about that? Europe is now fully on our side, Russia and China are officially neutral but not actively undermining us, and Iran is starting to feel serious pressure. Somebody’s foreign policy seems to be having an actual effect.

It can’t be President Obama, though. Too weak. Here’s what’s really happening: the EU is desperately getting on the sanctions bandwagon because they’re afraid that President Gingrich will bring down the hammer after he wins a landslide 535 electoral votes in November (the big-government leeches in DC stubbornly hold out against the tide, of course). The fear of Newt is forcing them to get serious for the first time ever.

Think I’m joking? Ten bucks says some actual conservative columnist makes this argument. For all I know, someone already has.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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