US has no more cards to play over Iran: Analyst

The United States has run out of options against Iran as sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s energy sector are threatening Russia’s natural gas supplies to Europe, an analyst says.

In a column for the Press TV website, Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran, said the Western governments bolstered Russia’s monopoly by excluding “Iran, with the world’s second-largest proven reserves of natural gas, from the EU market.”

“And now that they wish to impose a Kiev-based coup regime on southern and eastern Ukraine, they have almost no cards to play,” Marandi wrote.
He said the sanctions imposed on Iran to stifle Tehran are now close to backfiring.

“Ironically, crippling sanctions have started to cripple the tormentor,” wrote the author.

He said Iran and Ukraine are examples of how the continuation of hostile policies by the United States and its allies “can inflict even more damage on their standing and influence around the world.”

The academic said the policies pursued by Western governments in countries such as Iraq and Syria have resulted in “devastating consequences for the US’ global strategic position.”

US President Barack Obama and top US officials are repeating their threat of military action against Iran despite Tehran’s goodwill gesture, Marandi said.

“This has increased suspicions among Iranians that the US still clings to a destructive, zero-sum worldview,” he added.

Marandi said the Western governments’ imagination that they would be able to convince Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to back down on Tehran’s nuclear rights stems from their “potentially dangerous misunderstanding of the Iranian president’s position and could lead to disastrous Western miscalculations.”