The EU and UN have announced a new set of sanctions on Iran. Under the existing sanctions the Iranian economy was already in its worst condition for 30 years. Drawing on the experience of sanctions on Iraq, did the Western powers and the UN not learn that general sanctions harm ordinary people, causing suffering, illness and even death? Targeted sanctions would be far less harmful for the Iranian population.
By Common Dreams Staff
If Iran sanctions follows that of Iraq's, the future for Iranians does not look good.
Food and medical exports to Iran are being blocked from that country even though they are exempt from new sanctions instituted Monday by the European Union.
The new sanctions, ostensibly in the financial, trade, energy and transport sectors, are "the strongest, most comprehensive sanctions ever put in place on a country," National Iranian American Council Policy Director Jamil Abdi said, according to a release from the NIAC.
Trita Parsi, president of the NIAC, compared the sanctions with those against Iraq, noting, "With Iraq, that of course ended up with 500,000 Iraqi children dead, resulted in the shortage of medicine, and other needs, and ended up ultimately to forceful invasion and war," the Guardian reported.
On Monday, citing concern about Iran's nuclear program, the EU foreign affairs council tightened sanctions against Iran. In addition to current bans on oil and gasoline imports from Iran, new sanctions include but are not limited to a prohibition on most transactions between European and Iranian banks, the import, purchase or transport of natural gas; and the export of any materials relevant to the Iranian nuclear or ballistic programs, the BBC reported.
Iran denies it is developing nuclear weapons. The EU has asked Iran to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, but Iran says it requires the enriched uranium for a medical research reactor.
Washington-based sanctions attorney Eric Ferrari said food and medical exports to Iran are being blocked, even though those items are technically exempt from sanctions, according to the NIAC:
He said he has encountered numerous scenarios—an attempted export of a $250,000 of burn medicine, a multimillion dollar export of prosthetic limbs, exports of food supplies—in which goods that had a license from the U.S. government, a willing exporter, and a willing importer, still were blocked because no foreign bank was willing to take the risk to facilitate the transaction. The reason, he said, is that the U.S. government has announced broader and broader penalties for any foreign bank dealing with Iranian financial institutions, while making no distinction between prohibited and authorized transactions with those banks. The result is fewer and fewer channels for legal, humanitarian, food, and medical transactions."
At a panel discussion Monday in Washington about the humanitarian impact of the sanctions, NIAC Policy Director Jamil Abdi said Monday that some advocates in Washington describe the new sanctions as "the strongest, most comprehensive sanctions ever put in place on a country. When you hear that and you think about the experience of Iraq, where we had pretty stringent sanctions in place, in which conservative estimates say 375,000 children died as the result of the sanctions, we want to know — is this the pathway of the Iran sanctions, or are these smarter sanctions. Have we learned from these mistakes?"
Justin Logan, Director of Foreign Policy for the Cato Institute, said Washington's objectives "have shifted ... and as they are marinated today (are designed) to create pain on the Iranian population that will create fear inside of the regime that that pain will cause unrest—political unrest—an potential for regime collapse, revolution, overthrow, et cetera."
