Sanctions now involve blacklisting financial institutions. The US did this in 2005 with the Banco Delta Asia in Macao and it has done it too with the Iranian-owned Saderat and Sepha Banks, which have financed Hizbollah and Hamas respectively, or fund Iranian purchases of ballistic missile technology. ABN Amro was fined $80 million for allowing its Dubai subsidiary to make illegal money transfers to Tehran. A wider sanctions programme should target another Iranian bank, the Bank Melli, as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, both of which have been engaged in Tehran's procurement programmes. Surely the oil companies which ship petroleum to Iran and their insurers can be subjected to measures already used against banks?
Opponents of sanctions are sanguine that military strikes will work against Iran's nuclear programme. I am doubtful about this. Israel's Air Force was able to wreck the French-built Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 with eight F-16s, ironically a year after the Iranians themselves launched an attack on the same site with two Phantoms.
But Iran is four times the size of Iraq and more mountainous, and its government has had years to disperse and harden its nuclear installations. Since even the US will not have stocks of 30,000lb Multiple Ordnance Penetrator bombs until 2010, it is highly unlikely that Israel does either, assuming it is not planning to use tactical nuclear weapons, which would be semi-suicidal. Iran is also capable of responding via its terrorist surrogates, and, whatever the war-gamers claim, can probably paralyse shipping in the Straits of Hormuz. It can also up the ante for coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq at its own choosing.
None of the proponents of enhanced sanctions against Iran argues that the US should remove the military option from the table in what should be a concerted push to compel the Iranians to see reason. But it is similarly incumbent on those who blithely advocate force to understand its tactical limitations, let alone the chaos that is likely to ensue from such measures. Or perhaps they have already forgotten history's lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan?
