Anthony Aguilar came with the receipts, walking through every round of pressure since 1979, and the pattern is hard to unsee.
Carter froze twelve billion dollars, worth around fifty-five billion today, and banned nearly all imports.
Reagan branded Iran a state sponsor of terror and hunted for allies to squeeze harder.
Clinton banned American trade, investment and petroleum dealings while running a balanced budget, which Anthony notes was the strongest hand Washington ever held, and Tehran still didn't fold.
Then in 1996 Congress passed a law punishing foreign companies that invested in Iranian energy, which is more or less what Treasury announced this week wearing a new name.
Through all of it, Iranian output dipped, recovered and climbed.
Sanctions have pulled Tehran toward the table before, but they have never broken it.
There's a hole in this round too, since Oman looks set to collect the strait tolls and share them with Iran, which quietly defuses the threat to punish anyone who pays.
His warning is the part worth sitting with, because a siege that never quite kills only teaches the besieged how to live under one:
"often it leads to escalation instead of surrender"
The last real exit, he says, was the fourteen-point agreement back in April, a bitter pill and the final truck stop before a road with nothing left on it.
@WeTheBrandon
