You don't weaken a revolutionary by making them suffer more - that only helps them play their status game.
You weaken them by exposing the lavish lives their children and loved ones are living elsewhere.
Revolutionaries like the ones in Iran want to suffer in public - it helps them play their status game.
But they want to benefit in private - they want their children to live lavish lives in the West.
Revolutionaries have a status game - but it's different from most status games.
What drives status in a revolution is suffering. And sacrifice. And earning scars.
When you make revolutionaries suffer, you're handing out promotions.
Trump's team plays one kind of status game: Who closed the biggest deal. Who built the biggest thing.
The revolutionaries in Iran play another kind of status game: Who suffered the most. Who sacrificed the most for the revolution.
Strength to one side is weakness to the other
Sanctions make the other side suffer until they come to the table.
Works great on your regular autocrat.
Doesn't work on revolutionaries.
Revolutionaries want to suffer - sanctions give them what they want.
Does Trump's team understand that "revolutionaries" like to suffer?
Revolutionaries that suffer win the status game against the revolutionaries that don't.
🇺🇸🇮🇷 Kushner and Witkoff are flying to Islamabad. Iranian media says Araghchi won't meet them and called it "desperate."
An Iranian journalist on the ground just made it worse:
"We have no idea why they're coming. Araqchi will likely already have left by the time they arrive."
Iran really grew some balls didn't they
Source: J Post
"Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation." - Tennessee Williams https://t.co/sPmGZh06OG
"We co-operate in our group—our family, community, club, church, party, ‘race,’ or nation—in order to strengthen our group in its competition with other groups.” - Will and Ariel Durant