By Arash Aramesh, Guest Contributor
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told Al-arabiya, a Saudi news network, that the U.S. was not considering anything in the case of Iran except sanctions. The U.S. Senate passed a sanctions bill against Iran in January and the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the bill soon. Democrats and Republicans seem to agree that imposing sanctions is the magical solution to Iran’s complicated problems.
There are talks that revolve around imposing sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), an elite military force that has become a political and an economic powerhouse in the Islamic Republic. Targeted sanctions against the IRGC or high-ranking Iranian officials are designed to punish those responsible for Iran’s nuclear program, its support of terrorism, and its violation of human rights. But the imposition of sanctions and trade embargos on the entire country has been met with resistance by many observers familiar with Iranian politics.
Assuming that both Russia and China get on board with the U.S. sanctions against Iran, which is unlikely, broad sanctions levied against Iran will neither aid the U.S. and the international community in deterring the Islamic Republic from producing a nuclear weapon, nor will they pressure the ruling elite to respect human rights in Iran and stop the cycle of imprisonment, torture, and violence. Sanctions will have the opposite effect.
Looking at previous cases of broad economic sanctions shows that the U.S. and allies did not achieve the objectives they had hoped for. In the case of North Korea, sanctions coupled with government corruption and mismanagement worked hand in hand to impoverish the average North Korean while Kim Jong-il and his regime stayed in power and defied the international community by conducting nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
In the case of Iraq, backbreaking sanctions resulted in the deaths of thousand of Iraqi civilians while Saddam Hussein and his henchmen tightened their grip on the country. Sanctions did not weaken Saddam politically. He remained in power until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And the best known case of failed sanctions is the U.S. trade embargo imposed against Cuba almost half a century ago, which did not cause the communist regime to collapse. Fidel is no longer the head of state but Raul will continue the Castro dictatorship in Cuba.
So why should sanctions work in the case of Iran?
The concept of harsh economic sanctions is nothing new to the Islamic Republic. Iran has experienced various forms of economic sanctions since the 1979 revolution yet it continued to support terrorism throughout the region, resumed its secret nuclear program, and cracked down on dissidents throughout all these years. The Islamic Republic has real good experience in dealing with international sanctions.
The Iranian government, however, and the ruling elites will not suffer as a result of harsh economic sanctions. The primary group that will suffer as a result of new sanctions will be Iran’s pro-democracy movement, the Iranian middle class, and those in the lower classes; groups that are already suffering economically from government incompetence. This would provide the government with another great excuse to blame the West for Iran’s economic problems. Meanwhile, the shrinking Iranian middle class will get smaller, and people will become more dependent on the government than ever to distribute and ration basic goods. Life will become much more difficult for the ordinary citizen.
As a result of such sanctions, the IRGC will become more economically powerful. Currently, the IRGC controls important segments of the Iranian economy and if the West imposes sanctions on Iran, the IRGC would act as the country’s largest smuggler of goods. As the largest and probably the only major smuggling cartel in Iran, the IRGC will also become the determining agency on every important issue in the country, even more so than today.
Some critics may argue that sanctions helped end apartheid in South Africa and they might work against Iran as well. Sanctions alone did not end the rule of South Africa’s racist regime. Widespread divestment movements forced many companies to disinvest from South Africa therefore placing extra pressure on the regime. This meant that investments already made in South Africa were being pulled out. This is not the case in Iran.
The U.S. has a tough road ahead in dealing with Iran’s rouge regime but imposing sanctions will not make this road any smoother for the Obama administration. Sanctions will only strengthen the regime while weakening the opposition and the shrinking Iranian middle class.
Arash Aramesh is the Iran Researcher for insideIRAN.org, a project with The Century Foundation.
