"What should we make of the Iranians' behavior?" So asks historian Victor Davis Hanson in an recent essay. His answer:

Namely that the country's leadership is in deep political trouble. The Iranian government is desperate to provoke the West to win back friends in the Islamic world, and to quell growing unrest at home. Subsidizing food and gas, providing billions for terrorists and building nukes all cost money at a time when the state-run Iranian economy is in shambles.Because of incompetence in their oil industry, the Iranian mullahs have achieved the impossible: Despite having among the world's largest petroleum reserves, their production is shrinking and they have managed to earn increasingly less petrodollars even as the world price has soared.

And what to do about their bad behavior? Hanson suggests economic measures, i.e. giving the Mullahs gas pains:

It is undeniable that the U.S., without either invading or suffering many casualties, could use its air power to send the Iranian economy and military back to the mullahs' cherished 7th century. But there is no need to do so. Instead, if the EU would cease all its trade with Iran, and if the West would divest entirely from the country - that is, boycott all companies that do any business with Tehran - the theocracy would face bankruptcy within months.