Rob Andrews: “gasoline is the Achilles' heel of the Iranian autocrats. They have presided over such a dysfunctional country that they…”

“gasoline is the Achilles' heel of the Iranian autocrats. They have presided over such a dysfunctional country that they are in a situation where they sell crude oil in huge amounts to the rest of the world but import gasoline. Think about that. A country that is literally awash in the basic stuff that gasoline is made of cannot produce its own gasoline. Estimates go as high as 40 percent of the gasoline consumed by Iranian consumers is imported from other countries. Now another measure of the importance of what the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) is saying is this. Today when a citizen of Tehran fills up his or her tank of gas, they pay 40 cents a gallon. I wish I could go home and tell my constituents they were going to fill up their gas tanks for 40 cents a gallon. Obviously, it costs a lot more to produce gasoline than 40 cents a gallon in Iran, but this is such a sensitive issue for the population of the country that the Iranian parliament has voted, and as a matter of fact in January of this year the Iranian parliament voted to freeze domestic prices for gasoline and other fuels at 2003 levels. Why did they do that? They did it because it would be so disruptive to the society and the economy to have a price shock that would reflect the true cost of a gallon of gasoline. If such a disruption occurred, it would shake the control, the iron grip the autocrats have over this country.…”