- Suffocating sanctions could lead to a grave economic situation in Iran and to a shortage of food. This would force the regime to consider whether the nuclear adventure is worthwhile, while the Persian people have nothing to eat and may rise up as was the case in Syria, Tunisia and other Arab states.
- An unnamed Israeli official • Calling for the U.S. to cripple Iran’s economy with harder sanctions, to cause food shortages for the Iranian public as a means to gain diplomatic leverage. The impetus of this thinking came earlier today, when North Korea agreed to halt production of new nuclear weapons in exchange for food aid. While respecting the existential concern Iran’s nuclear prospects pose for Israel, the fact that the U.S. would itself impose a food shortage (unlike North Korea, where state mismanagement and famine were to blame) seems like it would aim the Iranian public’s outrage outward, not inward. The Arab spring had much do with economics, Tunisia’s high unemployment, for example, but a foreign state inducing hunger and starvation, and hoping people will therefore turn against their own government? That seems highly unlikely, as well as morally dubious. source