Will Iran's tactics succeed in absorbing US sanctions' shock?

The administration of US President Donald Trump imposed a new sanctions regime on Iran recently. The new wave of sanctions is seen as the most brutal in history.

The new package aims to shock the Iranians and force them to revolt against the Iranian regime, as well as put this regime under pressure.

This, Trump's administration hopes, will force the Iranian regime to succumb to American demands, even if not in a comprehensive manner.

Nevertheless, the regime uses a number of tactics that aim at absorbing the shock of the sanctions.

These tactics include the following:

1 – Faking inflation

A few months before the application of the new sanctions regime, the Iranian government quadrupled the exchange rate of the Iranian national currency. It raised the prices of basic commodities with the aim of cushioning the effects of the sanctions on the prices of these commodities. The government did this in order to make ordinary Iranians get used to high commodity prices and also the scarcity of the commodities. This is exactly why there is not a real popular uprising in Iran now.

2 – Market submersion

The Iranian government used foreign currency reserves at the central bank to submerge the market and cause the exchange rate of foreign currencies to come down against the Iranian currency.

3 – Heavy-hand

Iranian authorities used a heavy-handed crackdown on protests and dissent, even in the cases of peaceful protests. Iranian authorities allowed drivers and sugar cane workers to protest for weeks. They then banned the protests through a series of legal rules. The authorities after this blamed the demonstrators for making the life of ordinary Iranians hard. This made the public angry at the protesters and also exhausted these protesters.

The sanctions are not expected to yield their aspired results so long as the regime controls the economy and is able to suppress dissent. However, this will mean that the war of attribution between the US administration and the Iranian regime will continue for long.

Iran's mullahs have the time and the means to stay silent until they gain power. On the other hand, the US administration has the time to complete this war of attrition to the end.

This is why the US administration needs to rethink its tactics against Iran. It needs to find more confrontational and hostile measures if it really wants to achieve the desired results in the case of Iran.

Reda Berji Zadeh is a professor of political science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.