Full Title: US and Iranian Strategic Competition: Sanctions, Energy, Arms Control, and Regime Change
Author(s): Anthony H. Cordesman, Bryan Gold, Chloe Coughlin-Schulte
Publisher(s): Center for Strategic and International Studies
Publication Date: July 1, 2013
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
This report analyzes four key aspects of US and Iranian strategic competition – sanctions, energy,
arms control, and regime change. Its primary focus is on the ways in which the sanctions applied
to Iran have changed US and Iranian competition since the fall of 2011. This escalation has been
spurred by the creation of a series of far stronger US unilateral sanctions and the EU’s imposition
of equally strong sanctions – both of which affect Iran’s ability to export, its financial system,
and its overall economy.
It has been spurred by by Iran’s ongoing missile deployments and nuclear program, as reported
in sources like the November 2011 IAEA report that highlights the probable military dimensions
of Iran’s nuclear program. Additional contributing factors include Iranian rhetoric, Iranian
threats to ―close‖ the Gulf to oil traffic; increased support of the Quds Force, pro-Shiite
governments, and non-state actors; and incidents like the Iranian-sponsored assassination plot
against the Saudi Ambassador to the US, an Iranian government instigated mob attack on the
British Embassy in Tehran on November 30, 2011, and the Iranian-linked attacks against Israeli
diplomats.