Iran will be able to get over the United States' sanctions, thanks to its 40-year experience of withstanding western economic pressures, an analyst said.
"Iran has been sanctioned for more than 40 years. It is not something new," Hossein Mousavian, a Middle East policy specialist at Princeton University, said in a recent interview with the Middle East Eye.
After withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major world powers in May, the US reimposed economic sanctions on Tehran.
While admitting that the restrictions have a negative impact on Iran's foreign trade, the expert maintained that Tehran is capable of making it through the "hard economic time".
"Iran is the most experienced country in the world [at] handling sanctions. I don't believe any other country in this region has the experience, capacity or scale to resist against sanctions," he said.
The first set of sanctions was enforced in August and the second round, which targets Iran's oil industry as well as the banking sector, takes effect on Monday.
Mousavian said regardless of the resulting complications, the first round helped unite Iranian political factions to resist US bullying harmoniously.
The second phase is expected to cause greater hardship since it targets the lifeblood of Iran's economy, as oil and gas exports account for almost 60% of Iran's export earnings.
> Big Win
However, Mousavian argues that the situation has its merits as it can push Iran toward its long-pursued goal of weaning its economy off oil dependence.
"It is a very important objective of Iran's political security to manage an economy minus oil," he said, adding that the authorities should portray it as a "big win".
By squeezing Iran's economy, the US seeks to press Tehran to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and alter regional policies, but analysts believe Americans will not succeed in achieving either of the objectives.
Mousavian told the news website that the sanctions would do nothing to diminish Iran's defense industry.
"The Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s pushed Iran to go for self-sufficiency on the production of conventional weapons. Today, Iran is the most powerful country in the region for producing conventional arms," he said.
Kenneth Katzman, a senior American analyst of Iran affairs, also told the website that the pressure is unlikely to change Iran's regional behavior as the previous rounds of sanctions in 2012 and 2013 did not affect its approaches.
"Iran has been at the same level of regional activity, as it was before these sanctions started," he said.
Nevertheless, the US restrictive measures, Katzman claimed, have a range of desired effects including an "outright regime change".
"The ultimate goal ... is that Iran's economy will be collapsed so severely that Iran's political structure collapses," he said.
Mousavian stressed that the policy is doomed to fail.
"The US has been testing this policy for some four decades and has failed. Now President Trump is experiencing a failed policy and will soon realize that the change of government strategy is not working," he said in a separate interview with the German news agency DPA.
