An oily predicament

This sentence caught my eye in the dead-tree version of the Washington Post this morning:

"An oil drop of $30 a barrel is significantly more damaging to Iran's economy than UN Security Council sanctions," said Karim Sadjadpour, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "That's a loss of about $75 million per day in oil revenue. A further drop in prices could play a decisive role in the June 2009 presidential elections, for it could deflate [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's populist agenda."

Common sense, perhaps, but still quite powerful.