In the LA Times today, Doyle McManus says that President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran accord has indeed caused them economic pain:
But creating economic pain isn’t the goal. The goal is to force Iran to improve its conduct — to accept stricter limits on missiles, to accept a nuclear deal more onerous than the accord Trump abandoned, and to stop what the White House calls “malign” activities across the Middle East. That hasn’t happened. Instead, as the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies told Congress recently, the latest sanctions may have strengthened hard-liners in Tehran.
Just think about this for a minute. Suppose someone did this to us. What would be our reaction? Would we meekly cave in to their demands? Or would we start beating the war drums and insisting that the United States would never give an inch to a bunch of foreigners who have always hated us?
Merely to ask the question is to answer it. We all know how we’d react. So why do so many people keep convincing themselves that other countries won’t react the same way?
