As the author of the first comprehensive economic analysis of economic sanctions and a follower of all our Iranian sanctions, I can state unequivocally that the renewed economic actions will bring lots of pain but no strategic gain.

First, we are not dealing with Western rationality. Iran is run by ideological extremists who have abundantly demonstrated that no pain is too great for the Iranian people, as evidenced by their killing of thousands of their own with rifles, executions, and starvation. Even targeted assassinations, useful for upsetting their planning, do not deter these zealots who see their own deaths as shahids (martyrs), as noble and leading to the return of the twelfth imam and the ascendency of global Islam.