Secondo Newsweek (attraverso il Wall Street Journal), l'Iran non puo' agitare alla leggera lo spettro di un embargo petrolifero contro l'Occidente: la teocrazia ha trascurato talmente la propria gallina dalle uova d'oro, che trascura
Mr. Ahmadinejad and the mullahs around him seem to believe they can checkmate the Europeans, Americans and Israelis, Newsweek Middle East Editor Christopher Dickey writes [...] But Tehran isn't untouchable, he says. "Paradoxical as it may seem, their greatest weakness is their oil and gas industry. Sure, Iran has the second-largest oil reserves in the Middle East, after Saudi Arabia. But its facilities for pumping and processing the stuff are in such a sorry state that domestic demand for gasoline is 60% greater than the country's refining capacity," Mr. Dickey writes. To keep up, Iran has to import more than 95,000 barrels a day. To make matters much worse, the mullahs long ago adopted a policy trying to buy popular support with massively subsidized prices for cooking gas, gasoline and other products, which eat up a whopping 10% of Iran's gross domestic product.
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