Good evening. I’m Buck Valor, and if you were looking for a fresh narrative in the Middle East, I’m afraid you’ve accidentally tuned into a rerun from 1979.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian recently took to the airwaves to perform the political equivalent of a ‘Greatest Hits’ album. The lead single? ‘It’s All Washington’s Fault.’ According to the President, the reason the Iranian economy is currently doing a convincing impression of a lead balloon isn't due to decades of systemic mismanagement, a sclerotic bureaucracy, or the curious decision to prioritize regional shadow wars over domestic infrastructure. No, it’s those pesky U.S. sanctions.

It’s a masterclass in the art of the geopolitical shrug. Pezeshkian is playing the only card left in a very dusty deck: the Outsider Scapegoat. It’s convenient, isn't it? If the currency loses half its value before lunch, you don’t have to explain the intricacies of central bank incompetence if you can just point West and yell ‘Economic Terrorism!’ It keeps the internal critics quiet—or at least gives the morality police a reason to keep them quiet—while maintaining the status quo for the folks at the top who, strangely enough, never seem to be the ones struggling to find affordable eggs.

Of course, the irony here is a two-way street. Washington loves this script just as much as Tehran does. Sanctions are the ultimate ‘look like we’re doing something without actually doing anything’ tool for U.S. policymakers. They’re a blunt instrument that rarely hits the intended target but provides a fantastic talking point for Sunday morning talk shows.

So, Pezeshkian gets to blame the Great Satan for the fact that the lights are flickering, and the U.S. gets to pretend that freezing bank accounts is a substitute for a coherent foreign policy. It’s a symbiotic relationship of failure where the only people not in on the joke are the citizens standing in line for subsidized bread. But hey, as long as everyone has a script to read from, the theater must go on. I’m Buck Valor, and I’m just waiting for the intermission.