Evergreen Headline

Torn from anytime in my life:

The Experts Were Wrong About the Middle East

I love the intro:

There is a rare and growing bipartisan consensus in Congress about the need to smack Saudi Arabia with human-rights sanctions, or perhaps even tougher penalties, for its role in the death of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month but never walked out. Sanctions seem inevitable.

The only problem is that many of the same experts pushing for sanctions against Saudi Arabia have previously argued, in other contexts, that sanctions don’t work. That was the near-unanimous conclusion of top policy experts who supported the Obama administration’s decision to roll back sanctions on Iran, which had brought its economy to the brink of collapse, in exchange for a nuclear deal. It’s just one example of a broader trend: analysts suddenly discovering that the Middle East is more complex than they’d previously admitted.

The Washington Post, which now wants Saudi Arabia to pay a price for Khashoggi’s death, ran a piece just last year by Adam Taylor titled “Do Sanctions Work? The Evidence Isn’t Compelling.” Even the Post’s Jason Rezaian, who was held hostage by the Iranians and is now safely back in the United States, opposed more sanctions on Iran in a recent piece, arguing that they would only inflict more suffering on its population.

This logic is what prompted the Obama administration to engage the Iranian regime from a position of “mutual respect.” That was code for offering massive financial incentives in exchange for Iran dialing back its nuclear program. That effort began with cash payments to Iran for staying at the negotiating table. The administration then repealed sanctions in exchange for some tangible yet temporary nuclear concessions. For good measure, the Obama administration gave the Iranians more cash. That ultimately yielded a controversial nuclear deal, signed in 2015, that pressed pause on Iran’s mad dash for the bomb. Here’s the problem: By focusing exclusively on Iran’s nuclear problem, the deal effectively gave a green light to a range of other malign activity, like terrorism, missile proliferation, and support for other rogue states. In fact, that behavior only increased after the deal was signed.

That sort of policy—tying sanction relief to halting one problematic behavior, in a way that implicitly authorizes other misdeeds—is the last approach we want to apply to Saudi Arabia. And besides, it doesn’t really need the money.

We need to virtue-signal the hell out of them.

 

Comments

[Clarice Feldman]

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/412344-saudi-arabia-dismisses-top-officials-as-it-says-missing

[JM Hanes]

JiB:

I'm just trying to remember having referenced Fithian! Can you give me a hint as to where and when that was, because I'm having a senior moment here.

[JM Hanes]

"The principal beneficiary of her leaks was Buzzfeed reporter Jason Leopold, who also may be in legal jeopardy."

About time.

[JM Hanes]

Pin:

Ne apologies necessary. i appear to be the only one on the board who didn't get it!

[Clarice Feldman]

I'm very excited--ok, it's small things that do it for me. for 3-4 days I was having hellacious problems getting on the IT--figured out it was our old router. Called for a new one, and all is humming again.

[Jack is Back!]

JMH,

It was on Finding The Fall Guy thread at 10:05 or 10:50 am.

[Clarice Feldman]

Mickey Kaus
@kausmickey
Sept. 23: "Democrats begin to worry about Latino vote." (https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/23/politics/ip-forecast/index.html …) http://cnn.com/2018/09/23/pol …
Oct. 13 This new caravan appears, heading for border confrontation (https://www.foxnews.com/us/over-1000-hondurans-head-for-us-border-in-mass-migration-march-report …) http://foxnews.com/us/over-1000-h …
Good thing I don't believe in conspiracies.
[fixed]
6:30 PM - Oct 17, 2018

[Bubarooni]

Those things do burn out after time Clarice. If the previous one was 3-4 years old, you've definitely upgrade with new equipment.

K-Dude's family is of Turkish lineage, Adnan (the dude's dad) being the infamous arms dealer. Prince Al-Turki, the dude who got sidelined when MBS got the nod from the King, was the benefactor of the K-Dude's family. The Al-Turkis have been terribly hurt by MBS's rise.

MBS snuffing out an al-Turki coup?

Conjecture, the lot of it.

As far as I'm concerned, forget it jake, it's chinatown.

[Clarice Feldman]

Ditto, bubarooni. And spare me the moral outrage --which even Virginia Postrel has fallen sway to. None of our allies is clean--not even the UK or Australia which interfered grossly in our last election.

[Clarice Feldman]

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/310906/

Good R Senate +1 will make romney irrelevant.

[Bubarooni]

I'm pretty sure at this point that the UK and the Aussies have abused the 'Five Eyes' thing and hurt intelligence collection by doing so.

I'd wager their involvement in our last Prez election is The Big Thing hindering unwrapping what really happened.

[JM Hanes]

Hey guys, wander on over to the new thread!

[JimNorCal]

JiB: "GUS, wth are you talking about?"

Hasn't GUS been impersonated a couple times this week?

[Barry Dauphin]

Also via Scott Adams: make the Saudi‘s recognize Israel and pay to help Palestinians rebuild. Will then help them take care of Iran.