The drumbeat of support for harsh sanctions against Iran continues, this time in a featured article from Mark Dubowitz and Benjamin Weinthal.  Slate usually produces cogent pieces, but this one strains all notions of credibility and logic.

To begin with, their argument rests upon a single flawed assumption, proffered in the subhead:

Sanctions helped South Africa's pro-democracy movement. They can do the same in Iran.

Really?  They did?  Because I seem to recall that the sanctions against South Africa were economically pathetic and insignificant.  They had value as a message from the international community, but the meat of the sanctions did little.  In fact, the ban on arms trade with South Africa, one of the core components of the sanctions regime (along with oil), had the perverse effect of transforming South Africa into one of the largest and most sophisticated arms manufacturers in the world (see Crawford and Klotz for details).

And oil, the second primary focus of the sanctions regime, continued to flow freely.  Smuggling was rampant, and many states chose to defy the will of the international community to exploit a lucrative market.  Ironically, Iran was the main player to do so (see Klinghoffer for more).  In short, the international embargoes on goods had little effect on the apartheid regime, and certainly did not "marginalize and undermine the government" as Dubowitz and Weinthal claim.

Secondly, much of this piece rests on the notion that Green Movement leaders are calling for international sanctions to support their efforts.  They cite the example of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a filmmaker, to substantiate this claim.  Unfortunately, all other supporting claims are from "a growing number of key opinion-makers and activists in the green movement," "other Iranian dissidents and activists," and "Iranian experts and analysts" - an impressive list of anonymous sources.  I understand that personal security is a factor (nobody wants a knock on the door from the basij), but constructing an entire argument on nameless sources is poor analysis, especially when you factor in their dismissal of Mir Hossein Mousavi and other leaders speaking out against sanctions for "for what appear to be tactical reasons."  So the opinion of Mousavi, who was the face of the Green Movement and actually stood for office, can be summarily dismissed, but the thoughts of anonymous "dissidents and activists" are grounds for robust sanctions.

Puzzlingly, the authors paint China and Russia as complicit in Tehran's pillaging of natural resources, yet do not recognize that sanctions are meaningless without full international cooperation.  The U.S. could pass harsh unilateral sanctions on Iran, and would most likely be supported by many European allies.  However, if Russia and, even more, China, could undermine any sanctions simply by continuing to trade.  The growing energy appetite of China and Russian refinement capabilities could comfortably offset the loss of trade from the U.S. and Europe.  In other words, the Obama Administration is constrained in what it can do, something the authors fail to recognize.

Harsh sanctions are not the answer in Iran.  The risk of playing into the hands of Tehran's hardliners by acting as "the Great Satan" is high, and the potential payoff is low, especially without full international support.  More troubling is the idea that the authors speak for "Iranians who yearn for democracy," yet fail to produce a shred of proof that the disparate members of the loosely-affiliated Green Movement would welcome international sanctions.  Dubowitz and Weinthal, and Slate, should know better.