Michael Ryan King explains why the sort of coercive diplomacy being used against Iran tends to backfire:

Note, however, the phrase “all else being equal.” Western oil sanctions are now intervening in the decision-making equation, and probably not for the better. In this regard, a diverse, rigorous array of political science and psychological case studies, as well as quantitative analyses, have shown over the past five decades that pure great power attempts at “compulsion” or “compellance” via coercive diplomacy fails to induce the desired behavior in the majority of cases [bold mine-DL]. This is due to the interplay of national interests and political ideologies with individual psychological dynamics based on belief systems and emotional stimuli. What both historical case studies and large-scale quantitative tests have shown – going back literally hundreds of years in the nation states system – is that any “bargaining context” lacking in positive signals such as security assurances is likely to drive an opponent into exactly the behavior the sanctioning party wants them not to do.

It’s easy to understand why this would be the case. Issuing excessive demands that the other party cannot realistically meet is one way to guarantee that the targeted regime will dig in its heels. Another way to achieve the same result is by failing to offer any incentives that would give the other party a reason to compromise. When there is no way available for the Iranian government to satisfy Western demands except through humiliation and capitulation, those demands will continue to be rejected even as they create perverse incentives to do exactly what Western governments oppose.

King goes on to argue that the Iranian nuclear issue isn’t going to disappear even if the current regime were toppled:

Because one can and should go further than the ideologized Islamic Republic’s regime and leadership when talking about likely long-term Iranian positions on its nuclear program. The Shah of Iran started the program long before 1979 and was thought by most analysts to be building a latent capability. Even without the intemperate and mercurial Shah in power, given “Persian pride” and widespread societal feelings of chronic weakness at the hands of external powers going back hundreds of years, it’s very unlikely that “regime change” will mean “no enrichment capability on Iranian soil.” Regime change isn’t likely to be a silver bullet solution.

Advocates of regime change in Iran might claim that they don’t care if a democratic Iran acquired nuclear weapons because they (mistakenly) place so much importance on the character of the current regime, but we would likely be hearing something very different once it became clear that a democratic Iran was still interested in securing Iran’s position as a regional power. Instead of worrying about supposedly apocalyptic, suicidal leaders, the same people would begin warning about the dangers of “resurgent” Iranian nationalism and the revisionism that might entail. Regime change won’t be a “silver bullet” solution because the character of the regime won’t matter as much as they claim it does.

King makes an interesting observation on the reluctance of Asian governments to join the oil embargo:

This explains Asian allies’ distaste for U.S. and European actions: Asia is the main manufacturing region for the entire world, with escalating needs for crude, while the traditional West has moved towards banking, advertising, and other “downstream” services that require low amounts of oil consumption relative to production of value-added content.

Compounding this is the divide between South, Southeast, and Northeast Asia, on the one hand, and the traditional West, on the other. Popular Western elite ideas of a “rules based order” are far more physically real – bureaucratically, legally, and in value-based terms – in the European Union than in Asia. Non-Western rising powers are far less obsessed with nonproliferation and rogue-sate nuclear capabilities as the defining issue that drives all foreign policy and national security actions.

In addition to this, it can’t be lost on some Asian governments, especially India, that the non-proliferation regime is shot through with double standards and contradictions. What makes one government a “rogue” state makes another a valuable security partner, and proliferation activities that would cause one government to be condemned in the harshest terms are mostly ignored when they are carried out by another. For that reason, it must seem very strange to them to hear Westerners refer to demands being made on Iran in the name of the “international community” when most of the so-called community doesn’t care very much about the issue.