Iran was expecting pallets of cash.
Via JPost:
With large-scale protests erupting in Iran again this week, ex-CIA and defense official Mary Beth Long told The Jerusalem Post that the Trump administration’s leaving the Iran nuclear deal had enabled a broader pressure campaign.
In multiple discussions both on Tuesday and during a recent visit to Israel, the 12-year CIA field operative, who also was a top official in the Department of Defense, sent out nuanced messages balancing overall optimism with caution.
On one hand, she said, the US exiting the Iran deal was “part of a broader strategy to get stakeholders to move forward against Iran like they moved forward against ISIS. It is just that realizing there is a shared interest is much more complicated with this piece.”
“A perfect example is the pressure the US has and will continue to put on Iran related to its support to Houthi rebel’s in Yemen,” in which Iran is “keeping that conflict alive with Iranian enhanced arms, including rockets, UAVs and IEDs that endanger the civilian population as well as combatants,” she stated.
“The US will support the Saudi coalition in keeping key ports and waterways open, but will deny them to Iran” which seeks “to expand the conflict further,” she continued.
Long does not believe that “Iran will immediately openly test or grossly violate the nuclear agreement because right now, from the Iranian point of view, it is in a very good position. It allows itself to be portrayed as a victim of American duplicity. It has been the recipient of a number of European overtures to stay within the agreement.”
Yet sounding a cautionary note, she said, “I do not think the president realizes how lacking in bite secondary sanctions have been in the past. You cannot run an Iran policy post-JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] just on secondary sanctions. They can be one of the pieces, but not the centerpiece.”
In a sobering analysis, she said: “I am confident that the president understands that to the extent Russia and China don’t participate or are left out of primary and secondary sanctions, we are limited on the amount of pressure Iran feels through sanctions.”