It is not easy to understand what Barack Obama thinks he is doing. Hours after lifting of the main international sanctions against Iran of overs nuclear program, Washington imposed new but less extensive limitations in relation to Tehran's missile-testing program. Iranians had been celebrating the fact that the sanctions, which have seriously affected the lives of ordinary people, were finally gone when the news of a clampdown on 11 organizations and individuals was announced because of their involvement in banned missile tests. The gap between the ending one set of sanctions and the imposition of another appears to have been used by Washington to allow five American prisoners, including a journalist held for five months, to be released. The problem is that both in practice and symbolically these new sanctions are utterly meaningless. An Iranian minister crowed that the missile-testing program would continue regardless, but gave a thoroughly unconvincing assurance that the rockets being developed were not designed to carry nuclear warheads. And remember, the P5+1 deal signed last July in Geneva only obliged Iran to honor its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for 15 years. So what has really been achieved? Within 90 minutes of the end of the original sanctions. Iranian banks had reconnected to the international SWIFT for banking clearances. More than $100 billion of Iranian assets have been unlocked. It is almost certain that the regime is moving huge sums out of North American and European banks and relocating them to Russia and probably China. Whatever happens next, the regime is not going to be caught out another time. It needs to be able to afford the consequences of another international shutdown before it starts to break the Geneva deal and begin obstructing inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Meanwhile Tehran is crawling with Western businessmen seeking lucrative deals. This of itself means the political difficulty of reimposing wide-ranging sanctions is daunting. Indeed, unless Iran behaves with extraordinary aggression, placing it back in economic and financial isolation will be impossible. President Obama talked about the "smart" negotiations getting to the Geneva deal. In truth however, there is nothing at all "smart" about what has happened. As unfortunately it will prove, releasing Iran from its financial bonds is an act of the greatest folly. And it is not the Americans but their friends and allies in the region who will pay the first price. Washington thinks that by improving its relations with Tehran it will be able to exert a restraining influence on its blatant interference in the Arab world. Had the Geneva deal also included the demand that Iran quit its support for the bloody Assad regime, break with the Hezbollah terrorist group, cease its meddling in Iraq and end its sponsorship of Houthi rebels in Yemen, then Obama would have secured a genuine foreign policy triumph. Instead what he has is a foreign policy disaster, as history will in due time show. From the taking of the US Embassy hostages in 1979 onwards, the Iranian regime has demonstrated with unerring consistency that it is simply not to be trusted. The fresh sanctions are dangerous, not because they are ineffective but because they will give the Iranians an excuse to start welching on the nuclear deal, as soon as they have completed all the money transfers from Western institutions.
