Many are worried about the risk of war between the US and Iran. But the truth is, the US has been fighting with Iran for decades in an economic war waged via sanctions – which is about to get a lot worse.
Concerns about a war of guns, warplanes and missiles grew after Iran shot down a US spy drone amid already worsening tensions. President Donald Trump says he ordered a retaliatory strike in response – only to reverse course at the last minute.
Whether or not a shooting war does break out, the United States’ economic war has already been intensifying over the past year. Trump promised “major” new sanctions in response to the attack on the drone.
Existing sanctions have already devastated innocent Iranians. Not only that, they’ve undermining long-accepted principles of international cooperation and diplomacy, a topic I’ve been researching for the past 25 years.
Carrots and sticks
Many nations have recognized that sanctions work best as tools of persuasion rather than punishment.
Sanctions by themselves rarely succeed in changing the behavior of a targeted state. They are often combiUS-Iran tensionsned with diplomacy in a carrots-and-sticks bargaining framework designed to achieve negotiated solutions.
Indeed, the offer to lift sanctions can be a persuasive inducement in convincing a targeted regime to alter its policies, as was the case when successful negotiations involving the US and Europe led to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. That deal ended sanctions in exchange for Tehran shutting down much of its nuclear production capacity.
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