Hassan Hakimian
Anybody familiar with the Iranian economy - whether before or after the recent US and EU sanctions were stepped up - will be sceptical of simplistic judgments.
Despite record oil revenues,
With its administration criticised by friends and foes alike for lack of transparency, official Iranian data are received with suspicion. For instance, after a three-year gap,
Such weaknesses give comfort to proponents of sanctions. For them,
It is hard to predict the dynamics of the negotiations. But there are many reasons why sanctions are unlikely to deliver the blow that could force
First, although the sanctions are harsh and increasing in severity, other economies have managed to defy even harsher economic pressures in the past.
Second, if sanctions were judged by the harm they could cause to the population at large, their success would be a foregone conclusion. An array of restrictions on banking, shipping, insurance, ports, trade, commodities and energy transactions and ventures have already severed or complicated many of
Third, the case for sanctions often rests on an implicit assumption of a clear relationship between the economic and political cycles: economic sanctions cause hardship and this in turn is the catalyst for political change. However, this flies in the face of evidence: both the Arab Spring and
And here lies the ultimate flaw in sanctions: applied as a form of collective punishment, they penalise the victims of the target regimes as much as their perpetrators, who become adept at deflecting the worst impacts and use the spectre of external threat to suppress internal dissent. As
Sanctions may allow President Obama a chance to avert war for now, but by hurting the Iranian people, they also highlight the contradictions of a policy which was until recently couched in terms of friendship and amity with ordinary folk in
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