Iran and the collapse of the trade-for-peace theory

https://arab.news/2nfre

European countries, after the Second World War, came to a painful but profound conclusion: if they wanted to stop centuries of bloodletting among themselves, they had to make war materially irrational.

The answer they found was not idealism alone, but interdependence. Trade. Shared markets. Shared interests.

Over time, that logic helped give birth to what became the European Union. As the EU notes in its official history of postwar integration, the European Coal and Steel Community was created so that no single country could build the weapons of war against the others as in the past.

Established by the Treaty of Paris in 1951, it became a foundational step in Europe’s long march toward integration. The theory was simple. Countries that are deeply tied to one another economically are less likely to destroy each other militarily.

For a time, some in the Middle East believed a version of that logic could eventually apply to Iran.

The argument was always that commerce could moderate Tehran. That trade, investment, business links, and human ties would slowly pull the Iranian regime toward a more rational regional posture. If not friendship, then at least restraint. If not trust, then predictability.

That theory now lies........

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