While the cool kids have been off on the NR cruise, I’ve been in Afghanistan visiting with our top military commanders, diplomats, and Afghan leaders. Not as much fun, maybe but pretty fascinating — and even hopeful. (America’s millitary is a uniquely inspiring institution.). I’ll have more to tell you about all this soon.

Meanwhile, I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss the oped by FDD Senior Fellow Orde Kittrie that ran in the WSJ last week.

Orde writes:

If Barack Obama is to persuade Iran to negotiate away its illegal nuclear weapons program, he will first need to generate more leverage than what the Bush administration is leaving him with. The current U.N. sanctions have proven too weak to dissuade Tehran’s leaders, and Russia and China seem determined to keep those sanctions weak. Meanwhile, the regime continues to insist there are no incentives in exchange for which it would halt or even limit its nuclear work.
However, Tehran has an economic Achilles’ heel — its extraordinarily heavy dependence on imported gasoline. This dependence could be used by the United States to peacefully create decisive leverage over the Islamic Republic. …
A sustained initiative may be able to convince most or all current and potential suppliers that the profits to be gained from continuing to sell gasoline to Iran will be dwarfed by the lost loan guarantees and subsidies and foregone profits they will incur in the U.S. from continuing to do business with Iran. …
Halting Iran’s gasoline supply could contribute to reaching a tipping point — at which economic pressures and protests convince the regime its illicit nuclear program poses too great a risk to its grip over the Iranian people.
If the federal and key state governments in the U.S. were to make it their goal to achieve a halt by companies selling gasoline to Iran, it could be a game-changer. It may be our best remaining hope for peacefully convincing Iran to desist from developing nuclear weapons.

Worth reading the whole piece which is here.