Hitting Iranian Mullahs Where it Hurts

In today’s Wall Street Journal Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz discuss a novel approach to sanctions on Iran:

If we buy oil from despotic states, are we somehow complicit in their crimes? Even after the Arab Spring has highlighted tyranny in the Middle East, Americans and Europeans still generally remove oil and natural gas from their moral calculations.

But what if we could do a lot of good by sanctioning Iranian oil? Is it possible, moreover, for Europeans to continue to buy Iranian crude but give the Iranian regime less money? And could China and India, major oil customers of Tehran who couldn’t care less about the regime’s behavior, purchase as much crude as they want and still hurt the mullahs’ ability to translate oil wealth into nefarious actions?