Donald Trump’s economic sanctions on Iran are doomed to fail, as a century of experience reveals

A century of experience with sanctions, most often imposed by large nations against the small, details the pain they inflict and shows up their ineffectiveness

Among the flawed arguments used to justify them, seven fallacies must be debunked

Reading Time:4 minutes

Sanctions are often said to be “targeted”. In practice, however, they are collective punishment. They squeeze the middle classes and impose a disproportionate burden on the poorest and most vulnerable. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 10:00pm, 8 May 2019Updated: 5:50am, 9 May 2019

The sanctions imposed on Iran by US President Donald Trump have begun to bite the country’s economy hard. Inflation, seemingly defeated by President Hassan Rouhani, has returned with a vengeance, hitting 31 per cent in 2018. According to the International Monetary Fund, the economy is poised to shrink by 6 per cent this year, and inflation could reach 37 per cent.

Many industries are experiencing severe difficulties, and unemployment is mounting. Aiming to cut Iranian oil exports to zero, Trump is threatening to sanction countries – like China, India and Japan – that continue to buy Iranian oil.

Given the pain that Trump’s unilateral sanctions are causing Iran, are they really the “silver bullet” policy that his administration hopes they will be?

Since the first world war, governments have increasingly used economic sanctions to achieve their international political objectives. Despite a century of experience, however, the rationale for such measures remains far from compelling.

Economic sanctions have become even more popular in recent decades. In the 1990s, for example, sanctions regimes were introduced at an average rate of about seven per year. Of the 67 cases in that decade, two-thirds were unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States. In fact, the great majority of sanctions are imposed by large countries against small countries.

In addition, since the 1960s, the UN Security Council has established 30 multilateral sanctions regimes under Article 41 of the UN Charter. The most successful of these arguably played a key role in ending the apartheid regimes in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe).

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