US Foreign Policy in the Middle East has become a source of global discussion following continued escalation between Iranian officials, Israeli forces, and Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group. As international aid organizations, state ambassadors, and government officials continue to deliberate which methods must be employed to curtail the likelihood of total war between these state and non-state entities, with aims to restore relative stability in the region, critical analysis of US foreign policy by various non-partisan research groups repeatedly indicates a question on the effectiveness of sanctions imposed by the US government in efforts to pressure policy changes, peace negotiations, and lasting stability in the Middle East. The University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs references several manifestations of humanitarian crises that coincide with the onslaught of sanctions, oftentimes aggravating the conditions civilians face in regions already crippled by wide-scale economic and social strife. Research conducted on US sanctions in Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo indicate a failure in efforts to prevent or limit the continued destabilization of these states; economic hardships imposed by these sanctions only further damaged fragile civilian infrastructure. Additional research conducted discusses the need for alternative approaches to attempt at stabilization and/or influence the state and non-state actors in the Middle East.
The Keough School of Global Affairs examines historical case studies of the argued ineffective qualities of sanctions, exemplified in their analysis of US sanctions imposed on Iran, in both a historical and contemporary context. The first imposition of these sanctions, (following the 1979 student-led occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, where sixty-six diplomats and US embassy personnel were held hostage) halted the importation of Iranian products, in addition to freezing $12 billion dollars in Iranian assets held in US accounts . The designation of Iran as a state-sponsor of terrorism in 1984, after implications of Hezbollah’s responsibility in the 1984 bombing of US Marine base in Beirut, (who were at the time known clients of the Iranian regime) catalyzed the expansion of these sanctions including US foreign assistance, bans on arms transfers, and controls on exports for “dual-use” items (objects which can have both civilian and military/weaponry purposes).
It was these sanctions in the 1980s (with the culmination of former President Reagan’s 1987 sanctions, banning the importation of all Iranian goods and services, an amount which totaled to roughly $1 billion) that the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal characterizes as a large stimulus in the realignment of Iran’s trade . In efforts to seek new economic trading partners, Tehran intentionally avoided historic trading partners from pre-revolution suppliers (including Western European countries such as Germany and France, as well as Japan), assuming US political influence would inhibit free trade between the nations. Iran’s trade with smaller European countries, Eastern Europe, Islamic, as well as non-aligned nations grew significantly, as well as the Iranian government’s control of the economic sector in efforts to ensure trade remained within the realm of agreed relations. This shift, marking increased governmental purview and authority over Iran’s economic sphere (one of many increased powers the Iranian government received in the new post-revolutionary constitution) created what the MERIA journal describes as a “…persistent pattern of diversification…” in reference to Iran’s international trade. The implementation of US sanctions only served to expedite the end of Iran’s dependency on US and Western nations for trade and imports; from an overwhelming 80% of imports prior to the revolution and sanctions that Iran relied on US and Western allies to supply to a substantive decrease to about 63% in the years which followed the revolution (to 1996, where rounds of sanctions in both investments and trades saw the US shares of Iran’s imports drop to zero). It is worth acknowledging this action also coincided with the volume of imports with regards to Iran’s non-traditional suppliers increasing by over 8%, while traditional suppliers like the US and Western Europe saw only a 2% increase . This further released Iran from the purview of the Western hemisphere’s “policing,” as their economic growth no longer was dependent on American and Western centered investment (a problematic development considering the goal sanctions have of influencing an actor’s policy, not isolating the state, and diversifying its trading capabilities).
Contemporary sanctions on Iran have followed similar themes regarding attempts at containing Iran’s economic advancement in hopes of directly impacting policy change, notably in Iran’s covert and overt support (both fiscally and ideologically) of extremist groups, as well as attempts at halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s). In terms of economic impacts of sanctions, the Iran-Libya Investment Sanctions of 1996-1999 had expressed goals of halting the development of Iran’s oil industries, with the United States Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 passed by Congress establishing that these investment sanctions were meant to impair the military potential of Iran, particularly regarding the development of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and to reduce resources available to the Iranian government to fund terrorist activities and groups. Despite these outlined goals, testimonies given at the 1997 Committee on International Relations in Washington DC demonstrated failure of these sanctions.
In one testimonial, Jeffrey J. Schott from the Peterson Institute for International Economics conceded that the sanctions had an impact on Iranian costs, but argued the costs were modest and not truly impactful on the Iranian economy or a good pressurizer for policy change. Schott argued foreign investments would have to be halted for a decade or longer to have a noticeable impact on Iranian production capabilities, which was and remains unlikely. Schott argues Iran’s access to world markets to sell its oil allows for a maintenance of current production and had even increased in the 1996-1997 period, despite these investment sanctions. Schott further argued these unilateral sanctions the United States continued to employ in Iran were having adverse impacts that ran counter to the goals the sanctions were championing, elaborating that the costs on the Iranian economy to provide incentives for negotiating term contracts to secure supplies committed previously to US firsts were completely offset by the higher prices Iran then received in its exports, due to an overall tightening in world supplies and market fears around increased instability in the Middle Eastern corridor and terrorist developments. Schott concluded that these sanctions could simply drive-up world oil prices, further softening the revenue impact on Iran’s economy.
Shifting from the economic sphere to the social implications of sanctions both in a historical and contemporary context, much of the academic literature in amalgamation with news developments emerging from Iran demonstrate a wicked cycle of human rights violations, healthcare degradation, and societal destabilization in lieu of sanctions on Iran, oftentimes increasing tensions within the populace and aggravating anti-Western sentiment. Ali Gorji from the University of Münster references the impacts of 2013 bilateral sanctions on medical supply availability for the general population of Iran, which faced impediments from the bilateral sanctions imposed in efforts to force compliance from Iran regarding nuclear proliferation . While Gorji highlights that sanctions do not directly restrict medicines, the licensing, shipment, and purchasing of medicine were heavily impacted by the sanctions. Shortages, increased prices (by up to 50%) and the threat of further sanctions from international pharmaceutical companies left chronically ill patients in Iran desperate, and there was substantial destabilization in the region due to the impacts of the sanctions, which never pressured Iran into legitimate policy changes.
A study conducted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics also demonstrated a higher rate of success when there is international cooperation by way of multilateral sanctions as opposed to only US imposition, and that the sanctions are implemented incrementally, not all at once as was the case with Syria and Iran in 2015. The study references unilateral sanction failure in Iran and North Korea, citing the decades of implementation with little results. While the study conveys the need for international mobilization to establish multilateral sanctions, which may be more successful, the researchers also concede this may be difficult with states like China and Russia opposing this action in the UN.
It is important to remember sanctions do not succeed by causing distress on the receiving country, crippling their economic infrastructure, or by “punishing” the state in question; rather, they are meant to provide a counter strategy to warfare which allows for the US to gain an edge in establishing diplomatic routes to achieve foreign policy goals.
References
https://keough.nd.edu/event/advancing-the-debate-about-the-humanitarian-impact-of-economic-sanctions/
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/international-sanctions-iran
https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meria99_esh01.html
https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meria99_esh01.html
https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meria99_esh01.html
https://www.piie.com/commentary/speeches-papers/us-economic-sanctions-good-intentions-bad-execution
https://www.nature.com/articles/495314a#author-information
https://www.jstor.org/stable/425755?seq=2