Leave it to these barely coherent, shopworn Marxists to claim that the source of Iran’s problems lie not with a brutal Islamist dictatorship with zero respect for individual rights, but rather with an insufficiently generous welfare state and too much freedom for entrepreneurs. Apparently, if the West didn’t impose sanctions on Iran they would be able to embrace rigid central planning and usher in utopia. Who knew?

Sanctions have separated Iran, a neoliberal state with Iranian characteristics, from the neoliberal world order it looked set to join in the 1990s. Since then, the government has eroded Iran’s once generous welfare state and cut subsidies on bread, fuel, and other staple commodities. Responding to its sanctioned public realm, Iran’s leaders have expanded a gray, pseudoprivate economy unregulated by the democratic state to reach international markets through front companies. The middlemen doing these deals, “black knights,” satisfy Iranian military-industrial and consumer demand and provide the country with off-the-books cash to support the “axis of resistance,” Iran’s regional allies from Yemen to Syria which look likely to enter a regional war against Israel.