https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14468/iran-cat-and-mouse
.sanctions are working not by wrecking the lives of ordinary Iranians, who do suffer nevertheless, but by denying the mullahs the means to indulge in their deadly Tom-and-Jerry shenanigans.
Each time the US imposed sanctions, the mullahs took a bite of humble pie and briefly modified aspects of their behavior as if playing a Tom-and-Jerry script. However, once sanctions were eased, their Jerry lost no time to revert to its old tricks.
The key question here is whether Trump… will want or be able… to sit back and let time do its chastising work on the… Khomeinist regime.
A few weeks ago, the Islamic Republic’s “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described his regime’s decades-long conflict with the United States as a real-life re-enactment of the Tom and Jerry cartoons from Hollywood, in which a crafty little mouse provokes the clumsy big cat into all manner of threatening gestures but always ends up emerging safe and sound.
In Khamenei’s bizarre depiction, the Islamic Republic is the little mouse (Jerry) and the United States the big cat (Tom). Why should Khamenei make a conflict that has done so much damage to Iran as a nation the subject of so frivolous a depiction is something beyond the scope of this article.
