Clinton's Iranian Smack-down.

Hillary Clinton has put the smack-down on Iran. She believes they need a “timeout” because they are building nuclear weapons, not just nuclear power plant capability as they say. For Iran’s punishment, she is leading the charge on placing stronger sanctions on Iran. She said she has forged "a strong draft (of the sanctions) with the cooperation of Russia and China," the two countries that up to now have been reluctant to impose strong sanctions on Iran.

However, the actual sanctions, the smack-down has not been disclosed yet. I read a two column article on the sanctions and there was not one sanction mentioned, except they were going to be “strong sanctions” this time. According to Clinton, the USA was taking the kid gloves off and putting the smack-down on Iran with the help of China and Russia.

I am assuming the sanctions will include: no more fighter planes, no more oil, no milk, no Pepsi or Coke, no more Starbucks, no more GM imports, no McDonald's, no NFL shirts and we will stop translating all USA sitcoms and I Love Lucy reruns into Farsi. This time we will hurt them where it counts. I worked in Iran for 3 years and I know how the love their Pepsi.

Maybe Clinton is missing the point. A sanction is only effective when the sanctionee, that is Iran, needs something irreplaceable from the sanctioners, that is the USA, Russia or China. The sanctioners in this case have nothing that Iran needs. If Iran does need it, then they can purchase it from some other country, who can purchase it from the USA, Russia or China and resell it to Iran.

Iran sanctions are only good press in the USA. Iran is a founding member of OPEC. Iran makes big bucks selling oil to countries that need oil, which is all of the developed world. OPEC is the organization that fixes the oil price. We need oil so does China. China just signed a 10 year oil deal with Venezuela so they do not need Iranian oil. And if they do, they can buy it from Venezuela. That is why sanctions do not work. Any business person that has worked internationally for a global corporation can explain to Hillary why Sanctions are a waste of time. However, they do make great press.

Further, Iran does not care if the “world press” paints them as a naughty sanctioned country. Most Iranians do not read English anyway. And the ones that do clearly have not forgiven us for financing Saddam Hussein in a war against Iran several decades ago.

If you wish to hurt Iran, stop buying oil from OPEC. Tell OPEC to throw Iran out of OPEC. But to do that we would have to drill for oil in our own backyard. Now that’s an idea.