Reprinted from John’s Substack:
I wrote a Substack post yesterday (20 January 2026) titled “The Tag Team Fails in Iran.”
I described the Trump administration’s playbook for producing regime change in Iran.
Here is my description of the first of the four key elements in that plan:
First, the US has long been working to wreck the Iranian economy with sanctions. Indeed, President Trump redoubled those efforts after moving into the White House last January (2025). His aim was to bring “maximum pressure” to bear on Iran’s economy and he did just that. There is no question that Iran’s leaders mismanaged their economy in certain ways, but Western sanctions did far more damage than government ineptitude. The ultimate goal of the sanctions, of course, is to inflict so much pain and punishment on the Iranian people that they rise up and overthrow their government.
Here is the Secretary of the Treasury making my point clearly and succinctly:
