By Muhammad Sahimi and Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi

When the United States and its allies began imposing sanctions on Iran to persuade its leaders to reconsider their policy toward its nuclear program, they promised the world that the sanctions would be "smart" and "targeted." They told us that the sanctions would not hurt millions of ordinary Iranians who go about their daily lives and play no role in the decision-making process of the Islamic Republic's leaders regarding Iran's nuclear policy. Now that the sanctions are in full force, they are hurting the same people who were not supposedly the target. In fact, a human catastrophe is emerging whose scale poses as much a threat as an outright military attack.

The supposedly "smart" and "targeted" sanctions have been increasingly expanded to all areas, even if they are not part of the official sphere of sanctions. This is because the U.S. and its E.U. allies have imposed sanctions on the Central Bank and practically all other Iranian banks that are involved in commercial transactions with the outside world. Since these banks open lines of credit for imports, and provide financial guarantees for commerce with the outside world, it has become very difficult, if not impossible, to import vital goods and products into the country, even those that absolutely have nothing to do with the military, or oil, or the nuclear program.

An area that has been hit very hard is the pharmaceutical sector. Iran produces a large part of the medicines and drugs that its population needs, based on the generic versions of brand-name pharmaceuticals. But it is unable to produce the most advanced drugs that have come to the market over the past 10-15 years that deal with a variety of serious illnesses, simply because their generic versions are not yet available. As a result, Iran must still import a significant amount of drugs every year to address the needs of the Iranian people when dealing with such illnesses as leukemia, AIDS and others.

But, the sanctions imposed on Iran's banks and financial institutions have made importing the necessary drugs and the associated chemicals almost impossible. At the same time, as Iran's oil exports continue to decrease due to the sanctions strain on the country's resources, it becomes increasingly more difficult to pay for the expensive imported drugs, even if a way can be found to important them. As a result, the shortage of drugs has begun to create a human catastrophe.

The board of directors of the Iranian Hemophilia Society recently informed the World Federation of Hemophilia (IFH) that the lives of tens of thousands of children are being endangered by the lack of proper drugs as a consequence of international economic sanctions imposed on Iran. According to the letter that the Society's board sent to the IFH, while the export of drugs to Iran has not been banned, the sanctions imposed on the Central Bank of Iran and the country's other financial institutions have severely disrupted the purchase and transfer of medicines. Describing itself as a non-political organization that has been active for 45 years, the Society condemned the "inhumane and immoral" U.S. and E.U. sanctions and appealed to international organizations for help.

There are tens of thousands of Iranian boys and young men who are hemophilic and need certain drugs that must be imported. Many of them may need surgery for a variety of reasons, but in the absence of proper drugs for their hemophilia illness, the surgeries cannot be performed. In fact, several reports from Iran indicate that surgeries for all hemophilic patients have been canceled, and at least a few patients have already died.

Fatemeh Hashemi, head of Iran's Foundation for Special Diseases, recently wrote a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The Foundation cares for the needs of patients with life-threatening diseases, including a variety of cancers in adult patients as well as children, heart diseases, lung problems, multiple sclerosis (MS) and thalassemia. The foundation has been a highly successful organization that, in addition to Iran, has also served many people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whose work has been recognized by the U.N.

In her letter, Hashemi says she leads an organization "with 6 million patients and, hence, in contact with 30 percent of Iran's total population." Emphasizing the non-political nature of her organization and her letter, Hashemi adds, "Although drugs have not been sanctioned, due to the impossibility of paying for the imported drugs through the banking system, the heavy shadow of the sanctions is felt in the health sector. Not only has importing drugs been disrupted, importing the raw chemicals [for the drugs that Iran does produce] has also been disrupted. ... As a human activist, I call on humanity's conscience to pay attention to the fact that, despite the claims by those that have imposed the sanctions, their pressure is having its destructive effect on the life and health of the people."

Hence, advanced drugs for the aforementioned special and dangerous diseases cannot be imported, endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iranian people. There are about 37,000 Iranians with (MS), a debilitating disease that can be controlled only with advanced medications; otherwise, the patients will die. Three members of my own extended family living in Iran are afflicted with MS. Furthermore, given that even under the best medical conditions 40,000 Iranians lose their lives to cancer every year, and that it has been predicted by many medical experts that Iran will have a "cancer tsunami" by 2015, as every year 70,000 to 80,000 new cases of cancer are identified in Iran, the gravity of the situation becomes even more glaring. The net result is that, as a result of the sanctions, the shortage of drugs for such patients and other types of illnesses is becoming chronic in Iran and has reached dangerous levels.

Meanwhile, recent reports indicate that two large plants that produce drugs for a variety of illnesses have also been closed. The reason is that it has become essentially impossible to import the chemical compounds used in the production of the drugs, due to the sanctions imposed on Iran's financial institutions that deal with the outside world.

When the West imposed economic sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s, the United Nations' UNICEF estimated that the sanctions caused the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. Given that Iran's population is nearly three times that of Iraq, if the sanctions imposed on Iran last several years, the number of dead resulting from them will be larger than that of Iraq. Moreover, given that Iran still imports a significant amount of wheat, rice and other food products, if the sanctions drag on, not only may hundreds of thousands of Iranians die due to shortage of drugs and medical goods, but the shortage of food could also become very significant.

In the meantime, the sanctions have arguably failed to meaningfully shift the stance of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran's supreme leader most recently emphasized that the Islamic Republic is prepared to negotiate and has in fact never left the negotiating table, but will not be cowed into submission. So, for instance, if Iran is expected to forgo 19.75 percent uranium enrichment and close the underground Fordow enrichment facility, two of the P5+1's key demands at the Baghdad and Moscow talks, there must be some form of quid pro quo. Without one, there is no incentive for Iran to cooperate in an atmosphere already severely afflicted by a longstanding deficit of trust. There are many voices within Iran that have called on the leadership to find a compromise with the West. The U.S. and its allies can make such voices stronger and louder if they offer to lift some of the sanctions, or at least have exceptions that allow Iran's financial system to be involved in the import of vital goods and products with no military or nuclear applications, such as drugs and foodstuffs.

It may be useless to preach to the Obama administration about the human, moral, and ethical toll of its policy toward Iran, given that the president has in many respects perpetuated the destructive Middle East policy of George W. Bush, which in Iran's case has been even tougher and more damaging to the livelihood of the Iranian people.

But, the emerging catastrophe will be an ethical and moral problem for the West for decades to come, a catastrophe that is being created simply because Western governments blindly pursue crippling sanctions against Iran.

Given the tragic history of the U.S. intervention in Iran in the past, it would be prudent to rethink the consequences of such blind sanctions, and their effect on the thinking of the Iranian people about the U.S. -- a largely pro-U.S. population in one of the most turbulent areas in the world that has been largely hostile towards the United States.

(Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, analyzes developments in Iran for the website PBS/Frontline: Tehran Bureau. Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, a former Iran researcher at the Oxford Research Group, is editor of Al-Monitor's Iran Pulse. He is also working on his doctoral degree at the University of Oxford.)

 

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