핵심요약

• 미국의 압박 전략은 "전례 없는 규모의 경제적 전쟁과 고립"을 목표로 합니다.
• 이란은 IRGC 출신 인사들을 중심으로 단기적인 고통을 통해 협상을 강제하는 전략을 사용합니다.
• 이란의 내부적 정체성(개혁주의적 이상 vs. 실제 체제)은 외부 압력에 대한 대응 방식을 형성합니다.
• 이 전략은 시간이 걸리더라도 경제 상황 악화로 인해 결국 좌절될 것으로 전망됩니다.

도입

본 기사는 미국이 이란에 대해 취하는 경제적 압박 전략의 배경과 이란 정권이 이에 어떻게 대응하고 있는지를 분석합니다. 이는 단순한 외교적 갈등을 넘어, 지정학적 위험이 글로벌 경제 시스템과 에너지 시장에 미치는 영향을 이해하는 데 중요합니다. 투자자들은 이러한 대외적 압박이 이란 경제의 장기적인 안정성과 잠재적 변동성에 어떤 영향을 미칠지 면밀히 살펴봐야 합니다.

본문 1: 지정학적 압박과 이란의 대응 전략

미국이 이란에 대해 "경제적 전쟁과 고립"을 가할 수 있다는 경고는 단순한 외교적 압박을 넘어선 실질적인 경제적 무기를 동원할 것임을 시사합니다. 이란은 이러한 외부 압력에 맞서기 위해 내부적으로는 이란-이라크 전쟁의 경험을 가진 이슬람혁명수비대(IRGC) 출신 인사들을 핵심 동력으로 삼고 있습니다. 이들의 전략은 미국에 단기적으로 충분한 고통을 가하여 협상을 강제하고, 동시에 지역 동맹들을 분산시켜 이란 정권에 대한 보다 광범위한 연합 행동을 막는 데 중점을 둡니다. 이는 외부의 압력에 대한 방어적이고 공격적인 이중 전략으로 해석됩니다. 데이터(미국의 위협)는 이란이 단기적인 고통을 통해 정치적 목표를 달성하려는 현실적인 의도를 반영하며, 이는 향후 이란의 대외 정책이 단기적 정치적 이익에 의해 주도될 가능성을 높입니다.

본문 2: 내부적 모순과 장기적 전망

이란의 정체성은 외부의 압력에 대응하는 방식에 복잡성을 더합니다. 서방이 꿈꾸는 개혁주의적 이란의 모습과 실제 체제 내의 현실(예: 에빈 감옥 수감자, 쿰의 신학대학생, 도덕 경찰) 사이의 괴리는 이란 사회 내부의 분열을 반영합니다. 이러한 내부적 모순은 외부의 경제적 압박이 단기적인 정치적 협상에 성공하더라도, 장기적인 사회적 안정성과 경제 시스템의 지속 가능성에 심각한 위험을 초래할 수 있음을 의미합니다. 외부의 압박은 단기적 행동을 유발할 수 있으나, 내부의 구조적 모순은 장기적인 경제적 침체와 불안정성을 야기할 수 있습니다. 따라서 외부의 압박이 장기적인 경제적 결과로 이어지기 위해서는 내부 구조의 변화가 필수적입니다.

본문 3: 경제적 취약성과 미래 전망

이란의 전략이 결국 경제 상황의 붕괴에 의해 좌절될 것이라는 분석은 매우 중요합니다. 현재의 압박 전략이 성공하기 위해서는 이란 경제가 외부 충격에 대해 얼마나 취약한지가 핵심 변수입니다. 경제적 상황이 악화될수록 이란은 지역 동맹을 활용하거나 내부적 결속을 강화하는 데 집중할 것이며, 이는 외부의 경제적 고립에도 불구하고 정권의 생존력을 높이는 결과를 낳을 수 있습니다. 향후 전망은 이란의 경제적 회복 탄력성과 외부 제재의 지속성에 달려 있으며, 이는 국제 에너지 시장과 지정학적 리스크에 직접적인 영향을 미칠 것입니다. 투자자들은 이란 경제의 구조적 취약성과 외부 압박의 장기적 효과를 동시에 고려해야 합니다.

결론

결론적으로, 이란의 현 상황은 외부의 경제적 압박과 내부적 사회적 모순이 복합적으로 작용하는 지정학적 시험대입니다. 이란은 단기적 정치적 목표 달성을 위해 경제적 고통을 활용하는 전략을 취하고 있으나, 장기적인 안정성은 내부 구조적 변화에 달려 있습니다. 향후 이란 경제의 움직임과 지역 안정성은 외부의 지속적인 압박과 내부 사회 역학 관계의 상호작용에 의해 결정될 것입니다. 투자자들은 이러한 복합적인 요인들을 고려하여 이란 관련 자산의 잠재적 위험과 기회를 평가해야 합니다.

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원문 링크: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMie0FVX3lxTFBzSjNfamhrQ2J3X3laRkM1UjZtTHFHYUZkV1lnRVNQLWVQdU1OY1UzdXpZTk9ZNTV4OW1veDFyUERVNF9IbHB0WmxTbHRfZVJyWHRzWDgwNjgyQV9VcGVUeHFzU2c1UXhlTnlKWV9mR1RfU1dYSDFiNGhaSQ?oc=5

Why Iran has not folded yet - Atlantic Council

WASHINGTON—“No one has given the Islamic Republic of Iran a greater opportunity to make a Deal than me,” US President Donald Trump posted on social media on Wednesday. But the regime’s failure to agree to a deal, he added, will now result in the United States inflicting “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale.”

This decision could mark a shift in the administration’s approach to one more like the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran during the first Trump administration. However, it is now combined with the real threat of the US resuming direct attacks, which Trump has proved willing to carry out in his second term.

Such an approach is likely to produce results, though it will take time. Iran is currently led by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) veterans of the Iran-Iraq War. They are hard men who will shoot back before they fold. Their strategy depends on inflicting sufficient pain on the United States in the short term to force a bad deal, and on scrambling regional alliances to prevent greater coordination against the Iranian regime. But their hand will eventually be forced by a collapsing economic situation.

Ever since the Islamic Republic’s first thaw under Mohammad Khatami, the country’s reformist president who took office in 1997, the West has grasped at an aspirational vision of another Iran. It is an Iran promised by the diaspora, an Iran that peeks out from compulsory, loosely worn hijabs, and an Iran that listens to rock music in the privacy of Tehran apartments. These Iranians exist, and at times of particularly intense desperation or hope, many of them have hurled rocks at security forces in the streets, first chanting for change, and then for an end to the regime.

But this is not the only Iran. Iran is also the guards in Evin Prison, the seminary students in Qom, and the morality police patrolling the street. Every nation has a multitude of faces. But their governments usually have fewer. Revolutionary regimes in general are resilient. They have a savvy sense of the moods of the body politic and where their support lies. Rising from the streets themselves, they tend to sense the population better than do those who were born to the throne. Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader and son of the previous one, certainly did not come from the street. But the men of his father’s generation who surround him did.

Iran is often described as a religiously irrational, martyrdom-obsessed regime, and it is that in part. But for much of its governing leadership, the driving life experience is not millenarian religious precepts but the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. That nearly forgotten conflict lasted almost a decade and featured ghastly fighting, including human wave attacks and poison gas. And yet, much of the war was essentially a stalemate. By 1984, the front lines had basically sunk into the slop. Neither side could really advance, but the two sides bombed, gassed, and shot each other for years more.

One of Iran’s current top negotiators, Mohammad Ghalibaf, was a nineteen-year-old IRGC commander during the Iran-Iraq War. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was an IRGC soldier and doctor during the war. Those are the aspirational moderates. The new commander of the IRGC, Ahmad Vahidi, helped lead the IRGC in a senior role during the war, despite being in his early twenties. The new secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei , was overall commander of the IRGC during the war and after. He is the most significant of the regime’s new promotions, but these are all hard men practiced in their determination not to give in.

Even before Operation Epic Fury, the IRGC had demonstrated that it will prioritize the Iranian regime’s survival and power over what’s best for the Iranian people. Many IRGC leaders appear to view Bashar al-Assad’s main fault during the Syrian civil war as not shooting more people sooner. This is clear from the protests in Iran in January of this year, when Iranian security forces mowed down as many protesters as they could as rapidly as possible, with some estimates of the death toll rising above ten thousand within days.

Protest data is one of the best indicators available today to gauge the regime’s internal cohesion. The number and scale of demonstrations facing the regime are an important barometer of its strength. But perhaps more critical than size are the location and composition. The regime is well-postured to defend itself from what might be described as its class enemies—the upper-middle-class residents of North Tehran, students throughout the country, the extended families of the diaspora in the United States, and the remnants of the previous regime worldwide. After all, it has been doing so for almost a half-century. The plight of daring young women with avant-garde headscarf styles does not always motivate the miner in Sistan and Baluchestan, who might be friendlier to the Islamic Republic.

That is why protests in the regions, rather than the capital, are more existential. Like those of 2017-2018, economics-based protests cut at the lower-middle-class and working-class Iranians who staff the regime’s security forces, are more religious, and could be expected to benefit from the Islamic Republic. They are the ones who join the Basij, Iran’s internal security militia, and perform their military service in the IRGC—as opposed to the Artesh, the conventional armed forces of Iran. When they start to demur, the risk of the security forces fracturing begins to rise significantly, which would be a grave warning sign for the regime.

Another important indicator of regime cohesion is Iran’s supply of hard-currency assets, which includes dollars, euros, yen, and gold. Iran uses hard currency to pay its proxies, pay for imports, and prop up its domestic currency, the rial. Oil sales are the main way that Iran earns hard currency. That is why the most effective sanctions on Iran have targeted its energy exports broadly, but most critically the banks that facilitate petroleum payments and transfers. In 2013, concerted international pressure on Iran’s oil industry brought its oil exports to an average of below 1 million barrels per day—down from about 2.2 million barrels per day in 2011, under the weight of international sanctions, which helped lead to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Under the first Trump administration, Iranian crude exports had risen back up to 1.85 million barrels per day, before falling to about 440,000 barrels per day. Iran’s foreign currency reserves subsequently crashed from a high of $120-$128 billion under the JCPOA to $15 billion in 2019, once Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions were applied. From 2019 to 2020, as the bulk of that pressure hit, its accessible foreign reserves declined further to $12.4 billion. Had there been a second consecutive Trump term, the Iranian regime would have almost certainly been forced to negotiate.

Today, it is not clear how much oil Iran is exporting. Certainly, it is shunting as much as possible over land routes, especially via Iraq, but these are presumably a pittance in comparison to its seaborne trade.

One additional challenge of negotiating a deal now has to do with the Strait of Hormuz. If a deal to reopen the strait allows Iran to collect fees or tolls, then it will likely require lifting many of the current and highly effective nuclear sanctions on Iran’s financial sector to process the fees. De-linking financial sanctions from Iran’s nuclear program could mean that critical US sanctions on Iran end even without a specific agreement on the nuclear issue. Instead of a deal that includes Iranian tolls on shipping, then, the United States should seek out other ways to keep oil flowing and global energy prices stable.

Where does this leave the Iranian regime? An optimistic reading would be that if three drivers converge, then the regime’s grip over the country could start to break. These drivers are: first, Iran is unable to export enough oil to support its reserves; second, the regime’s internal cohesion begins to crack and results in a weakening of Iranian military power regionally; and third, hyperinflation in the country produces widespread, sustained popular unrest.

Time is working for the United States, in the medium and long run, as Iran is faced with shrinking funds and an inability to export its energy. In the very short term, though, during the remaining, gasoline-intensive summer driving season in the United States, and with a restive American populace ahead of the midterm elections this fall, Iran is maximizing a perceived advantage.

For the United States, medium- and long-term success requires US sanctions to remain firmly in place on Iran and not be given away as part of a broader deal. That will be harder than it was a decade ago during the “maximum pressure” campaign, after a higher tempo of fighting in the war. Iran will escalate before it starves, and several Gulf states are already seeking to ensure their security around an unpredictable Iran. Saudi Arabia, for example, has just signed a security deal with Turkey and Pakistan, the implications of which are unclear but signal a regional scramble for security. Continuing threats from Iran’s leadership—like its recent promise to go on “fully offensive” operations—are helping drive this shift, though in the context of a pressure campaign probably means the status quo is untenable for Tehran.

The signals of a weakening regime are clear. What will ultimately cause it to cave in is unknown and unknowable. The United States has a bad track record, from the Soviet Union through Iraq, of predicting political dynamics in foreign countries. So, in truth, the regime might fall tomorrow; the would-be “shahinshah” might return and reestablish the monarchy. Or, the regime might hold on for another three decades, and our grandchildren might still be concerned about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The future is written with courage, and it is a difficult thing, given the cost, to wish young Iranians of any stripe or class to take to the streets again.

Source: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMie0FVX3lxTFBzSjNfamhrQ2J3X3laRkM1UjZtTHFHYUZkV1lnRVNQLWVQdU1OY1UzdXpZTk9ZNTV4OW1veDFyUERVNF9IbHB0WmxTbHRfZVJyWHRzWDgwNjgyQV9VcGVUeHFzU2c1UXhlTnlKWV9mR1RfU1dYSDFiNGhaSQ?oc=5