The White House set to announce a
major sanctions package against Russia tomorrow in response to the
death
of Putin critic Alexei Navalny.
But there's just one problem.
Their attempts to use sanctions as a deterrence have been
absolute failures.
So since starting the war in Ukraine,
Russia has abated restrictions diverting oil shipments from Europe to
China,
allowing their GDP to grow by
3.6% last year. With Iran,
Biden's sanctions have done nothing but make that nation even
more oil rich again.
Iran shipping its crude to China.
All right, joining us now with reaction,
former State Department advisor on Iran,
Gabriel Narona. Gabriel, good to see you.
We appreciate you joining us.
So what do you make of the administration trying to
put more sanctions on Russia?
Is it going to work?
And is there a policy strategy that if implemented,
could work with Russia?
Well, these sanctions are going to look great and really
strong to people who watch MSNBC,
but they're not going to fear.
They're not going to make the the Kremlin
very afraid. Look, they're going to double down on a
sanctions policy that you've just shown is making Russia richer.
That's almost unprecedented that you put sanctions on a country
like Russia and their GDP grows faster than Germany,
faster than the UK and faster than the United States
last year and this year.
And that's because they're focusing on things that look strong,
not on the actual things that make Russia's economy
move, Gabriel. It's astonishing at how
much money both Iran and Russia have been able to
make
under with their oil exports under the sanctions regime.
Both used ghost tankers. Iran,
for example, has been able to
export their oil. Exports are running at a five year
high,
making 10s of billions of dollars last year in oil
exports,
largely to China. Russia shut set up its own shadow
fleet and insurance,
and its exports to Saudi Arabia
grew to 100,000 barrels of oil a day.
And it's also exporting crude and distillates to the United
Arab Emirates.
And Biden has done nothing to sanction any of these
tankers.
Well, it's worse than that.
He's cutting off American oil production.
He's cutting off LNG exports to Europe.
Guess who's producing it in their place?
Russia and Qatar and Iran are the ones who who
fill in that gap on LNG.
They're the ones that filled the gap on on oil
production.
And so part one is you reduce the volume that
they can,
they can, they can do and you do that by
sanctioning their ghostly.
You do that by sanctioning insurers.
But the other one is you go after the price
by increasing American oil production.
We did this in 2019 and 2020 in the Trump
administration.
That's how we were able to bring Iran to the
brink of bankruptcy.
They went from $124 billion
in foreign change reserves down to $4 billion.
They were not able to do
any economic transactions like that.
And so there's a way to bankrupt Russia.
There's a way to bankrupt Iran.
But these guys are not doing that.
They criticized our policy, but if they actually adopted it,
they would have massive success here.
Yeah, to your point, in Iran,
it was enforcing sanctions and it was drill,
baby, drill back here in America.
We want to get your take on this,
Gabrielle, the State Department's Inspector General,
announcing an inquiry into a mysterious
to the mysterious suspension of Biden's former special envoy for
Iran.
That would be Robert Malley.
Malley's security clearance was suspended last spring over his alleged
ties to an Iranian influence campaign in the US.
So this is a story we don't have all the
details on yet.
But how serious is it that you we could have
had
an Iran ally working in the US government to build
relationships for the US with Iran.
It's extremely dangerous. Look, this is one of the most
powerful positions at the State Department.
I worked for his two predecessors.
The idea that someone like that wouldn't be able to
hold a security clearance
should concern all Americans. And now we've actually been without
AUS special representative for Iran for 10 months.
This is during a period where Iran is killed and
their proxies have killed over 30 Americans.
They're on the verge of a nuclear weapon.
We need someone in this position.
And the malley things only get weirder and weirder the
more you dig.
We've learned more about this case from Iranian state media
than we have learned from our own government.
They really, it's just it's just astonishing.
I just raised the question.
Speculation. Maybe the Biden administration doesn't really want an envoy.
I think you're right. Because,
look, if you get an envoy,
that guy has to go before the Senate for confirmation
and has to answer questions like what is the Biden
administration's strategy for Ron, right.
What is it called? There's no strategy or not a
very good one.
Gabriel, thank you for being with us.
We appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks.