FLASH
Shkruar nga Edward Luttwak 
What would bring down the theocratic regime: If the disappearance of oil revenues led to the overthrow of the Ayatollahs' regime, it would not be only Netanyahu who would celebrate...
Throughout its early history - but not the last 4 decades - the main threats to Israel's security came from its Arab neighbors. This led to the outbreak of several wars against Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. But with the exception of Jordan, Israel's Arab enemies were actually representatives of a much more powerful threat: the Soviet Union.
To dilute America's influence in the Middle East, Moscow supplied thousands of tanks and hundreds of planes to Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. Thousands of Soviet technicians and handling experts went to the region to help prepare local armies, even though Arab officers were educated at Soviet military academies.
For the first decades, he was a major threat to Israel's survival as a state. At the time, however, no one considered the possibility of directly striking the Soviet Union itself. Apart from the certainty of a strong retaliatory response, Israel had no concrete targets to strike, even if its small air force managed to penetrate Soviet airspace.
But today everything is different. The Shia militias, which have been targeting Israel for years, and which greatly escalated their attacks after the October 7, 2023 events in Southern Israel, are entirely armed and directed by Iran.
This is true across the Middle East, from Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, to 2 militant groups in Iraq. But unlike the former Soviet Union, Tehran did not leave any immunity from Israeli actions. The main weakness is the money that Iran gives to the militias.
Iraq's Shiite fighters can extort some money from the country's oil revenues. Hezbollah, for its part, receives some funding from Shia diamond buyers in Sierra Leone and from smugglers in South America.
But over the years, it and other similar organizations in the region have become increasingly dependent on the funds they receive from their payers in Tehran. But even those funds will begin to run out, because even the most dedicated to the cause of Tehran must receive their salary to feed their families.
This is most clearly the case in Yemen, one of the world's least productive countries, where the Houthis are financed by the monthly payments fighters receive from Iran. But Hezbollah has also become more dependent on its Iranian ally, also because the extortion of airport and customs revenues has brought less and less income due to Lebanon's plunge into poverty.
And all this means that Iran's export earnings must now go to pay for a long list of military expenditures abroad, in US dollars rather than in domestically printed rials. Beyond the maintenance of foreign allies starting with Hezbollah, there is also the heavy spending of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, with its 125,000 troops as well as a naval force.
This includes spending on imports of Chinese and North Korean missile components, as well as the foreign exchange costs of the entire nuclear program, which continues on a very large scale. In practice, most of this money comes from a single source: oil. It is true that Iranian farmers grow pistachio nuts and other exportable agricultural products, and that there are several other important exports, although the famous carpets of Tabriz are now out of fashion.
However, in the last budget, oil accounted for 83 percent of Iran's exports. For their part, traders who export Iran's agricultural and handicraft exports tend not to repatriate the foreign currency they earn, as they use it for the imports they bring in.
Although much lauded by the regime's propaganda, state-controlled industrial exports remain few. So the flow of dollars that supports Israel's enemies, and that has caused so much trouble for Western interests, from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, comes almost entirely from oil loaded into tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a piece land about 25 kilometers from the southern coast of Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his last speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel's "long arm" could reach them too. In fact, Khark's location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. The distance of 1,516 kilometers from Israel's main airbase is much smaller than the main Houthi oil import terminal in Yemen's Hodeidah, which was destroyed by Israeli jets in July and attacked again in recent days.
Iran has made many efforts to reduce its dependence on the Khark terminal. This is not because it is too close to Israel, but because it was too close to Iraq, and because it was attacked and burned during the Iran-Iraq war. The result is the new Iranian oil terminal at Jask. Positioned on the shores of the Indian Ocean, it is much further from Israel than Khark.
But this is not a problem for IDF strategists. The oil arrives at Jask from a very long pipeline, which can be ruptured at several points that are even closer to Israel than Khark Island.
Given that Israel can easily cut off Iranian funding to Hezbollah and its other enemies, why hasn't it cracked down on oil exports?
The answer: "because of the Obama law". Announced quietly but very forcefully by the former US president, it halted any Israeli or US attacks against Iran, even as the Islamic Republic has continued to kill US soldiers in Iraq and Yemen, and has continued to attack Israel through its proxy militias. his.
Even on April 13, Iran directly attacked Israel. Because of Obama's great fear that he would be manipulated into going to war against Iran, just as his predecessor went to war against Iraq, the then US president's all-out effort for a historic reconciliation with Iran was ignored completely the simple fact that the fanatic rulers of the Islamic Republic could not reconcile with the West.
Since Obama's people are also present in the current Biden administration, the US has continued the policy of unilateral restriction, which it also imposed on Israel. This at a time when the Ayatollah's regime has continued to forcefully suppress a pro-Western domestic opposition that hates its corrupt and wasteful rule.
US policy did not change even as Iran continued to strike US allies in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. In the event of a Kamala Harris victory in November, Obama's people would continue to work in the White House. And that leaves very little room for Israeli action against Iran.
Of course, attacking a vast country of 91 million people would be a reckless act for Israel under any circumstances. But stopping Iran's oil revenues — the benefits of which are denied to a people who continue to suffer under an oppressive regime, and which most Iranians vehemently oppose — is another matter entirely.
Moreover, given that hyper-inflation has caused starvation in Iran's urban population for the first time since the fall of the Shah in 1979, an attack on Iranian oil exports could also bring about the regime's downfall.
Of course, there are many variables between any action Israel might take, and such a highly desirable consequence. But if the disappearance of oil revenues would bring the end of the Ayatollahs' regime, the one who would celebrate would not be only Netanyahu./Adapted Pamphlet from "Unherd"
Note: Edward Luttwak, strategist and historian known for his works on grand strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations.
Lini një Përgjigje