Reed, in his blog post on Steve Clemons’ The Washington Note, concludes that: the Iranian [...]]]>
Reed, in his blog post on Steve Clemons’ The Washington Note, concludes that: the Iranian government would do more damage to their own source of revenue than to western importers if they limited output to punish Western economies; the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have little ability to project power beyond their border; Tehran possesses no “on-off” switch for Hezbollah (despite what Lee Smith might argue); Tehran could harass commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf but this would impact Iranian oil revenues; and the Islamic Republic will not develop a sizable nuclear arsenal anytime soon and will be susceptible to anti-missile systems.
Reed writes:
]]>Every tool at Iran’s disposal comes with serious limitations: the “oil weapon” is self-defeating; Iran’s conventional military is too modest; any asymmetric attacks would be small-scale or prompt massive retaliation; and nuclear intimidation is evaporating with the deployment of new anti-missile systems. Iran’s leaders might still make rhetorical threats, but their tools are too weak if they wish to convert verbal attacks into physical ones.