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I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our names, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Melissa Etihad from the Los Angeles Times.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thanks so much for having me.
Very happy to have you here.
Very important piece.
You've got middle class Iranians resort to buying rotting produce as U.S. sanctions take toll.
Co-written here at the Los Angeles Times.
So you've just been there and now you're back or you're still there?
So I'm actually, we have a reporter there who works for us and he's the person that has gone about in the streets and has been talking to people.
And so I'm based in L.A. and I have the luxury of trying to reach people from the office as well as talking to experts.
OK, and then so I was going to say your co-author's name, but I couldn't possibly.
You want to give it a shot?
Sure.
So his name is Ramin Mossarim and he's been with us for quite a while.
And, you know, it's really great to be able to to work with him because he has, you know, access in a way that not many journalists or people are able to have.
And another added layer is this, you know, he speaks Farsi.
And so when he went around the streets and, you know, we asked him to kind of get a pulse from people, right, ordinary Iranians on what, you know, Trump's maximum pressure policy has been like.
What what we learned, it was just, you know, awful, but it's not a shock.
You know, it's something that we've known has been going on for over a year now.
And then so do you know, is there an official percentage on the current inflation rate now?
Well, last time I checked, inflation has decreased.
It was 50 percent in June and then it dropped to 48 percent in July.
And that kind of occurred simultaneously, along with Rial rising 20 percent.
Yeah, they cut some zeros off the end of it.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's not, you know, shocking.
I mean, the short term, what you see is ordinary Iranians will take the brunt of these sanctions.
Right.
And so people on the street are having a hard time even affording to buy food.
And so grocery store salesmen are putting it to the side and people are coming in at dusk and buying food for a cheaper price.
Medicine is extremely scarce and hard to come by.
And so you have all these different factors that in the short term are impacting everyday Iranians.
And now we're seeing that's impacting middle class Iranians.
But that doesn't mean that Iran's economy is is doomed.
Right.
It's it's the kind of situation that we've seen over and over again when it comes to the U.S. imposing sanctions on different countries.
Right.
There's this question about whether or not it's effective.
Right.
Well, yeah, it's effective in inflicting economic damage, but is it effective politically in getting them to do what we want?
That's a whole other question.
And arguably not.
But so another important aspect of this, of course, is that when all of the open market businesses are shut down, it's the black markets that thrive.
And of course, those are controlled by either the IRGC or at least the businesses that are corrupt enough to be in bed with the IRGC so that they can get away with trading in the black market and not get in trouble for it.
So the bad guys are the worst guys in the government are actually empowered by the sanctions against the whole country.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I mean, you raise a good point.
And it's it's a shame because the bad guys, as you said, are just going to be getting richer because of Trump's maximum pressure campaign on Iran.
Economic mismanagement, corruption is also going to become worse.
But Iran has also learned lessons from decades of being under sanctions.
And so at least we have an Iranian president right now who's trying to make those changes to help the economy, if anything, grow slower.
But at least it's still growing.
Right.
And so one way they're doing that is by having more of a focus on domestic production.
I'll give you an example.
Right.
So you have medicine, which has been really scarce and expensive.
And so now you have people in the private sector who have more of incentive to come up and make these drugs themselves.
So if anything, that's one silver lining.
But as you mentioned, it's just an overall really devastating effect on Iranian people.
And it's it's not working.
Right.
I mean, we've seen for weeks now that tensions have only increased.
So the question remains, will Iran come to the negotiating table or will they stick it out?
I don't know, to be honest with you.
It's what we have to keep an eye on.
Well, all indications are they said we'll talk again as soon as you start lifting these sanctions that you've put on us unreasonably, which is actually pretty reasonable considering the circumstances.
Yeah.
No, I mean, one would think that.
Right.
But we're noticing like this game, like a tit for tat game.
Right.
Like last month, I believe there is this feeling that maybe Rouhani and Trump are going to meet.
And then like the next day, Rouhani kind of backpedaled on that.
And, you know, we found ourselves where we are right now, which is what's going to happen.
And then again, we have the UNGA coming up in September.
And so will Trump and Rouhani meet?
If they meet, will it just be for theatrics like we've seen numerous times when it comes to Trump meeting with global leaders?
The question is, will will Iranian people be able to go on and kind of live their lives without having to to deal with this unnecessary stress?
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Well, and a lot of it has to do with domestic politics on both sides, of course.
The Iranians really could probably satisfy Trump without really changing their position much in the sense of if they said they would negotiate away some of the sunset provisions and keep permanent some of the restrictions on the amount of centrifuges they can have running at any given time or whatever, these kinds of things.
And maybe give him a partial victory if they feel like it, but they can withhold it, too.
And so a lot has to do with their perception of American politics, too, whether they think they're going to be stuck with him for another six years or whether they think that maybe they'll get a respite.
And so there's a lot at play there.
And especially since the Americans demands, I mean, if you take the heritage speech, the Pompeo heritage speech, it's like 15 points of ultimate surrender that they couldn't possibly give into.
But it's enough things on the list that maybe they could give the U.S. four or five.
It probably wouldn't even hurt too bad to do so.
Give the American politicians a win and get back to the JCPOA, which is what everybody else on Earth would like to see happen.
Right?
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
I think at the moment what you're seeing is a really stubborn Iran and a very stubborn Trump administration.
And on the sidelines, you have the other signatories of the JCPOA, and they're just holding their breath.
Whether or not they can be effective mediators, we're seeing it play out right in front of our eyes at the moment.
And, you know, if they're not successful, I think then that raises the question of, well, OK, will Iran be the first to kind of to try to make the compromise?
Or will the Trump administration?
To be honest, my feeling is that Iran is their authorities.
They have their hands tied.
Eventually they're going to have to to come and say, all right, you know, these sanctions won't hurt us maybe in the long run.
It won't collapse the currency, but we're still struggling.
That's my interpretation of maybe what Iranian authorities are thinking.
All right.
So you mentioned in the article about how the all these other powers have not reimposed the sanctions.
They're still within the deal that said they are very compromised by the U.S. Treasury's restrictions because American sanctions apply to any companies from any country who would do business with Iran.
And in fact, they even canceled the typical waivers given to Japan and South Korea for buying their oil and all of that.
So I wonder, how does that compare, do you know, to the so-called crippling sanctions of the Obama administration, which were, after all, under a U.N. Security Council resolution?
And had the cooperation of all of those powers, as long as they believed that Obama was working in good faith toward a deal, which he actually was.
Right, right.
So like you mentioned, Obama had placed sanctions on Iran before they began negotiating for the nuclear accord that was signed in 2015.
And those sanctions were very hard.
They're very tough.
You know, Iran suffered definitely throughout all that.
But at least one thing that the Obama administration made sure of was that other international businesses who might want to do trade with Iran, especially humanitarian trade, they weren't prevented from doing so.
Humanitarian trade historically has always been something where I would say the U.S. wouldn't want to get in the way of that.
But that has shifted right now in the Trump administration.
And they would say that they're not trying to prevent any type of humanitarian aid from being prevented from going into Iran.
But the sanctions have been so hard on international businesses that they're scared to make business with Iran.
And so whether it's one degree of separation removed or three degrees of separation, the point is that it's been having a devastating effect in ways that the Trump administration has yet to acknowledge.
Yeah.
And then I guess it's pretty hard to compare in terms of just the standard of living.
I guess we could break out the charts on the inflation rate at the time or this kind of thing.
But it's clear that it's having its effect on the population.
Now, see, I mean, stepping back to the strategy of the whole thing, I think it actually really is fair to say that very, very few people want an actual war.
But I think and I think some do.
There's a great piece in New York Times just the other day about the Israelis attempt to force a war for the last decade or more.
But I think even among the hawks in the government, it seems like what they really think is that they can get a regime change without a war, that they can.
It's not that they're really trying to force the Iranians to the table over the JCPOA.
It's that they're trying to make the regime so brittle that it'll be subject to some kind of popular uprising or a wink wink one like they did in 1953, that they'll be able to replicate something like that.
Or that they'll just be able to make the people of Iran so miserable that they will, without American help, rise up and overthrow them or some kind of sounds to me like very wishful thinking along those lines.
But it means that this is permanent.
If they can't get their regime change, it means it's either this is the status quo for the rest of the Trump terms or war if it gets worse.
Yeah, no, I mean, Scott, you raise such a good point, right?
If you read in between the lines, what we're seeing is a Trump administration that's trying its best to squeeze Iranian authorities to act in the way that it wants to act.
And then on the surface, though, they have, you know, what they say is we're not seeking regime change in Iran.
That's something that's completely off the table, which may in fact be true.
But what they're doing is creating a lot of tension and frustration.
And that's something in Iran for ordinary Iranians, and that's something Iranian authorities are worried about.
Instabilities, similar to what we saw in 2009 with the Green Revolution, would be devastating inside Iran.
But whether or not regime change is something that should happen, that's up to the Iranian people, right?
I have Iranian background.
I'm a second generation.
But even on my end, like I wouldn't say, oh, I know what's best for Iran, right?
That should be up to the people to decide.
And I think you're right, like you mentioned earlier.
I think Iranian authorities are just hoping they can coast along until elections come and then see where it would go.
But I don't know about you.
I can't imagine if Trump is, you know, going to win the election again, what that means, not only for Iran, but the entire region.
Well, now, so let me ask you this.
And I'm sorry, because this is a little bit outside of your article.
But under the current demands, even Trump is not demanding an end to all enrichment on Iranian soil, is he?
I think that's the point that I'm confused about.
I'm not quite sure if he's even articulated exactly where he wants Iran to go when it comes to the nuclear deal.
I think another sticking point is that the nuclear deal didn't include the ballistic missiles, which we're seeing has been another sticking point.
Iran claims that it has the right to kind of do these tests and to have that, you know, be part of its national security.
And then the U.S. is saying the complete opposite.
And that wasn't something that the nuclear deal even touched on.
So you raise a good point.
And I think it's that and also more, right?
They want more things in the nuclear deal that wasn't necessarily negotiated during the Obama administration.
I just actually searched it in the Heritage speech.
He does say Iran must stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing, which they don't have the facility for that anyway.
That's so radical.
I mean, I don't know.
Many experts said that that nuclear deal was preventing Iran from ever obtaining the means to create nuclear weapons.
And so let's see if we can create a more soundproof nuclear accord.
And that just seems not plausible, to be honest with you.
Right.
Right.
Well, it just depends on how broadly you want to define it.
Right.
The Israelis view is for them to have a nuclear program at all is tantamount, as they say, to having a nuclear weapons program.
But then again, the nonproliferation treaty guarantees their unalienable right to peaceful nuclear technology as long as they're not making weapons out of it.
Yeah.
No, you're absolutely right.
And I think one of the most devastating impacts that Trump's maximum pressure campaign has had on Iran is that it's been pushing people to become more hard line.
And if anything, discouraging ordinary Iranians from believing that any moderate or reformist factions within Iran have the power or will necessary to engage with the international community.
And so you have parliamentary elections coming up in Iran in the coming year.
And I think that'll also be interesting to see where their domestic politics kind of play out because of everything going on.
Yeah.
The Trump government has certainly made a fool out of Rouhani and the so-called more reformist types who are trying to get along with the United States and played right into the hands of the right wing hawks there.
Yeah.
And then even for Rouhani.
Right.
I mean, when you when Trump designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, it would have been political suicide for Rouhani to even criticize the IRGC at that point.
It's about Iranian nationalism.
So even for a moderate politician such as him, he has to come out in support of these really hard line elements that I think otherwise we'd have more nuanced conversations taking place inside Iran about those elements.
And then so now what about China?
They're still buying Iranian oil, right?
Yes.
That's a fascinating whole angle to this geopolitical mess, because it seems like China and Iran relations have been improving.
And I'm curious to see if China will still continue to buy oil, even though the U.S. has revoked its waivers.
Yeah, I mean, they do have a lot at stake either way, but I guess we'll see.
We don't really know yet.
Is that right?
What their reaction is?
Yeah, I think in July, June, maybe they were buying some oil or they're stockpiling it.
They might have, I guess, evaded U.S. sanctions here or there.
We're still trying to see how it's going to play out on the U.S. side of things.
But either way, China has been improving relations in that region for some time, and they're going to benefit from that economically in the long run.
Yeah, well, you can only be a hawk against so many countries at the same time before you make them all allies.
Yeah, but what does that say?
Like, my enemy, what is that?
Like, my enemy is my best, something like that.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
America's friends with everyone's enemies.
Yeah, yeah, right.
All right, well, listen, it's been great to talk to you.
I really appreciate it and great work here.
Thank you so much.
Let's be in touch.
All right, everybody, that is Melissa Etihad from the Los Angeles Times.
The article is Middle Class Iranians Resort to Buying Rotten Produce as U.S. Sanctions Take Toll.
All right, y'all, thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
