Rambo: How is Iran supposed to be giving all of this military and economic aid to different countries if they’re supposedly so broke because of sanctions against them? The media never asks that question. I’ve always wondered that. Supposedly they’re supposed to have been crippled by sanctions, so where is all this spare cash coming from? Something’s fishy.
They have the money. It doesn’t take a whole lot. Who are they supporting? Hezbollah. The Palestinians. The Houthis. That’s all very much affordable for them. All of those groups have their own income streams, banks, businesses, you name it, they’ve got it. The Houthis have all the weapons left over from the Yemeni Army because Ansar Allah is nothing but the former Yemeni Army.
Hezbollah has extensive underground arms factories and they make most of their own weapons. Hamas also has large factories that manufacture weapons and Islamic Jihad and the Salah-al-Din Brigades also have their own factories. The Houthis are now running large factories where they are making their own rockets, missiles, and drones. Hezbollah factories also manufacture these things. Hamas factories also make drones, mortars, rockets, missiles, and even submarines!
All of these factories – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi in Yemen, are underground, often deep underground. They’re pretty much untouchable short of a ground operation.
Anyway, in Iran, military spending comes first. I don’t know that they are spending much money in Syria or Iraq. There’s not much to spend on over there. They’re helping Assad, but they aren’t really in Iraq at all despite what you hear.
This military assistance to the Resistance takes precedence over everything. Also they’re not broke. They’ve been exporting lots of oil and oil products and nobody seems to be stopping them. It’s not like Venezuela where they can hardly import anything. Whatever sanctions there are on Iran are not nearly as bad as the ones on Venezuela.
There’s nothing fishy. Iran is a large country that has a big economy and quite a bit of money on hand like all big countries. They are already flooding Gaza with cash and weapons to replenish what was lost and rebuild what was destroyed.
On the other hand, the spending abroad is starting to get a bit controversial and the Iranian opposition has taken advantage of that. But the opposition rioters are only ~15% of the population. Yet that boils down to 8 million Iranians, so you can see that they cause a lot of ruckus. 78% of Iranians support the mullocracy. Soleimani had 86% support. Two thirds of Iranians support helping the Palestinians. Helping the Houthis is less popular with only 57% support.
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If that’s so, does that bolster the position of the critics of sanctions that typically, SANCTIONS DO NOT WORK? Have sanctions stopped North Korea relative to their drive for atomic weapons? Iran? Russia from being bad actors on the world stage? My point was people are quick to call for sanctions on countries they don’t like, but the effectiveness of said sanctions seems to be very questionable. As far as Venezuela goes, I see Mr. Maduro and his colleagues are still there despite all the maneuvering by the U.S. and others to get him out.
Sanctions never get rid of anyone or any government. Not really. Everyone just goes super nationalist and blames the economic mess on the sanctions, which is correct. The Chavistas still win 70% in elections, despite all the mess. That’s because Venezuelans, as much as they hate this mess, realize that it’s 0% the Chavistas’ fault. All sanctions do is kill a LOT of innocent people. Venezuelan sanctions have already killed 100,000 people! That’s the general idea – to kill as many civilians as possible.
And most US sanctions are always on food and medicine. All cases you described generally good and medicine are also blocked. Food and medicine are absolutely blocked to North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran. I don’t know about Russia but they have not been too hurt by sanctions.