In accordance with the November 2013 interim agreement known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), which is still in effect, Iran was granted some limited relief from sanctions. But ever since then, write Emanuele Ottolenghi and Saeed Ghasseminejad, Iran has been circumventing the remaining sanctions with abandon. This does not augur well for any prospective deal premised on the idea that sanctions will “snap back” if Iran fails to uphold its obligations:

Iran’s [recent] economic windfall . . . goes well beyond the monthly cash transfers and temporary easing on trade stipulated in the JPOA. . . . [Tehran’s] gains are only partly due to sanctions relief: its improved position also results from lax sanctions implementation by its neighbors, reluctance by European authorities to discourage their own economies from trading with the Islamic Republic, and Tehran’s fine-tuning of its talent for bypassing sanctions. As a result, the interim nuclear deal looks increasingly like a slow-motion funeral procession for the sanctions regime. . . .

Direct trade [with Iran] is also getting a push from the new psychological environment that the interim deal has created. Few in Europe believe the sanctions will remain, and many are exploring future commercial opportunities. Meanwhile, Europe’s bilateral trade with Iran is climbing back to pre-sanctions levels—further evidence that banking sanctions are no longer effective. . . .

The Obama administration may still believe it is able to snap sanctions back at any time if Iran cheats on its commitments under a final agreement. Developments thus far under the interim deal suggest otherwise.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].