Center for Middle East Policy

The Saudis are certain to have hacked many more phones to obtain compromising information on their critics, Americans as well as Saudis.

It’s wildly inappropriate and dangerous for an American diplomat to openly threaten individual assassinations of Iranian military commanders...There is a rhetorical and substantive difference between promising tough, decisive US responses to any attacks on Americans vice specific threats to kill individual commanders — especially from a State Department official.

The Iranians really do have alternative industries to fall back on and a significant domestic capacity, as well as the ability to leverage their relationships with several of their neighboring states to try to muddle through economic adversity. Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, some of the Central Asian republics and, of course, Syria, elsewhere across the region — it does have a reach that goes beyond that of the U.S. Treasury Department.