Facing Iran’s extraordinary attack on two oil facilities in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, the Saudi government should be retaliating. As it sits idle in face of this attack, Iran has reason to be inspired to new aggression. Of course, it’s up to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to decide how to respond.
But short of Saudi military action, it makes sense for President Trump to pledge, as he did on Wednesday, to “substantially increase sanctions” on Tehran. Absent this new pain, Iran will see its attack as a stunning success: as proof that it can escalate against America’s international order without consequence and thus as a reason to risk more aggressive attacks in the future, including against America.
These new sanctions must bite hard. But what might achieve that objective? I would suggest two efforts.
First, the United States should give foreign multinational companies operating in Iran’s hard-liner-dominated energy, nuclear, and telecommunications sectors until Oct. 18 to suspend their activities there. This would cut Iran’s access to critical economic revenue. In the dramatic decline of Iranian oil exports, those sectors are the lifeline to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-aligned hardliners.
Second, Trump should now inform President Emmanuel Macron of France that he will sanction French interests if Macron pushes ahead with a European Union-sponsored plan to support Iran with $15 billion in credit. Iran is demanding that money in order to avoid taking new steps to breach the 2015 nuclear agreement. But if Iran gets that money, it will gain economic space to continue escalating against America. Iran’s idiocy last Saturday has given Trump moral cause to play hardball with Macron.
To be sure, these steps would represent a dramatic escalation of the maximum pressure strategy campaign. But they would also educate Iran to the folly of its military escalation. The hard-liners must know that every time they attack American interests, America will make that choice inordinately expensive.
