Sorry, Now Is Not the Time to Lift Sanctions on Iran

The Islamic Republic has access to global food and pharmaceutical markets, and the U.S. offer of help was rebuffed.

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The coronavirus has hit Iran harder than most other countries so far: 1,812 Iranians have reportedly died from COVID-19; 23,049 are afflicted. Gravesites are so large they can be seen from space. For anyone who knows and cares about the Iranian people, this is a tragedy of massive proportions. So perhaps it’s not surprising that there have been growing demands for sanctions relief. But there is a difference between caring about the Iranian people and caring about the regime, and lifting sanctions will serve only to prop up the system that continues to tyrannize the Iranian people.

Last week, Bernie Sanders called for the United States to lift sanctions on the Islamic Republic, writing, “As a caring nation, we must lift any sanctions hurting Iran’s ability to address this crisis, including financial sanctions.” Sanders’s message echoed a tweet by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which likewise noted that continued U.S. sanctions are “against humanitarianism” and “hamper Iran’s epidemic response.” Joining the chorus, a group of 25 organizations led by the pro-regime National Iranian American Council also urged the immediate lifting of sanctions. The clamor falls into the now-familiar category of advocating for policies embraced pre-virus, now spiced with a COVID-19 rationale. But it is still worth unpacking the question of Iran sanctions, regime management of the virus threat, and the Islamic Republic’s overall economic policies. 

Let’s start at the beginning: In 1979, Iranian GDP per capita was $2,427. Ten years into the new regime’s reign of terror, it was $2,197. Twenty years into the regime, it was down to $1,757. Forty years after the revolution, what was once one of the region’s most advanced economies, is plagued by inflation, government mismanagement, and corruption, making basics such as rent and food unaffordable. Even absent the draining Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the regime’s stewardship of the economy was based on a set of bowdlerized “Islamic” economic principles that, coupled with endemic corruption, destined the nation for economic disaster. “Economics,” Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini infamously intoned, “is for donkeys.”

Sanctions began early after the revolution, a product of the hostage crisis and Iran’s global assassination campaign that saw the murder of regime opponents and defectors across Europe, the Middle East and even into the United States. But the sanctions in place were limited in nature, focused on trade and assistance until as late as the mid 1990s. Even then, major U.S. businesses were either directly or through subsidiaries doing business with the regime, not to speak of the land-office subsidized trade between European nations and the Islamic Republic. 

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  1. John DeVaux

    Sanctions, as I understand them, eliminate access to US dollars; the resource needed to buy medical supplies in the global market. America, and therefore we Americans, decided the Nation of Iran needed to submit to us. I omit all of the justifications we or the Iranians make for our responses. (That our is collective including both parties.)

    Like carpet bombing or reprisals against civilian populations they result in unintended consequences. The full political spectrum spends its time blindly following ideology to avoid any responsibility for these consequences.

    Instead a response might consider what can we do to mitigate an isolated Iran's suffering.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Logical

    This is pure neocon propaganda, which is responsible for the American quagmire in ME since 9/11.

    The neocon mantra is simple: American hegemony is noble. Anyone else's is TERRORISM.

    We screwed Iran in 1953 and they screwed us in 1979. Their pride in themselves is as strong as our pride in ourselves. Obama buried the hatchet, and gave us a reset. But the neocons hoodwinked Trump to restart the cycle.

    Let the Iranian people sort this out on their own.

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    1. Chase Choate

      Where is the Neocon propaganda hiding in this piece ? I can't seem to snuff it out. Is the author secretly hinting that we should invade to remain the regional hegemon ? Maybe it's because the writer is painting the ruling government as the theocratic authoritarians they are ?

      From what I read, the US has done and is doing what it can to help this regime during the pandemic without going out of it's way to bolster the regimes legitimacy. The tweets from Iran's leader himself suggest he is the one spewing the propaganda of the Chinese communist party.

      You are definitely right in my opinion when saying we have screwed with them and they have screwed with out. The legacy of the Allen Dulles CIA will live with this country for a long time yet to come. But in the very next sentence to then pivot and say that Barrack Obama buried the hatchet with Iran is patently insane. The former president appeased an authoritarian state just like Trump has done in a slightly milder form with North Korea.

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