While visiting Jerusalem earlier this week, the French foreign minister pledged that he would push for new multilateral sanctions against the Iranian nuclear program. Congress, meanwhile, has included significant new economic measures against Iran in its recent package of national-security bills. And since last month’s drone and missile attack, even the White House has shown signs of moving away from its tacit policy of minimally enforcing existing sanctions. But Sever Plocker, one of Israel’s most prominent economists, is skeptical:

Despite thousands of Iranian officials, from regime leaders to field commanders, being blacklisted by the U.S. and the European Union, Iran’s economy continues to function and progress. There is considerable doubt that the bombastic announcements of additional U.S. and European sanctions heard [last] week will change the situation.

Firstly, Iran maintains intricate and developed economic relationships with countries that do not see themselves bound by the sanctions regime, including Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Secondly, even the most comprehensive sanctions tend to unravel and weaken over time, as gaps within them widen. Meanwhile, the international community’s political will to enforce them diminishes; the validity of a significant part of the sanctions on Iran naturally expired at the end of 2023 and was not renewed due to a lack of consensus in the UN Security Council.

The diminishing effectiveness of the sanctions has pushed decision-makers in Tehran to launch a military campaign against Israel and could lead them into a prolonged war against us—a war they perceive as an escape from a volatile domestic political situation and a means to maintain their regime. . . . While Hamas could have been and still can be coerced economically to release our hostages, challenging and blocking Iran’s Middle Eastern imperial aspirations with another round of sanctions is unlikely to be effective.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.