The sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the EU on
Iranian crude oil exports were not supposed to cause a spike in oil
prices. Yet as Reuters analyst John Kemp reported this week, “the
policy has backfired.” This is despite the fact that President
Barack Obama, a smart guy advised by a slew of other smart folks,
was empowered to determine the best course of action. And yet the
policy still failed. Why? As Sheldon Richman explains, it’s because
the matter that these “experts” were grappling with does not permit
the kind of knowledge they would need to design a plan calibrated
to produce the results they seek.