The goal of most sanctions, from a diplomatic perspective, is to place enormous financial pressure on an economy so that the population revolts agains the government in question. It's believed that when the "price of onions" becomes too high for a society to tolerate, revolution occurs.

I'm not saying the world is/isn't a better place, just explaining the common beltway logic re: Iran sanctions.

The goal of the sanctions is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The sanctions cause economic harm, forcing Iran to the negotiating table.

It's not anyone's goal to overthrow Iran. No one want to clean up the mess. There are already enough messes in that region already (afghanistan, iraq, syria, yemen).

America has been diligently trying to overthrow the Iranian government for nearly 70 years, _long_ before Iran started their nuclear program in 1970:

In 1953, the CIA baited the Iranian coup d'état by covertly supporting pro-shaw groups. The shaw was then overthrown in 1979, bringing Khomeini to power as the Supreme Leader. Our role in the later Iranian revolution isn't as clear, yet. After that the 2009 Persian Awakening was additionally supported by the states.

Fighting Persia goes back quite a way before 70 years ago...

s/their nuclear program/our nuclear program.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RS21592.pdf

The US puppet planning to start building 23 nuclear power plants in the 70s were based on US support to create a US friendly power-base in the middle east.

I wouldn’t say it isn’t anyone’s goal. For one, John Bolton, NatSec Advisor, openly advocates it. And it’s not like the US hasn’t done it before.

But we already had a deal with Iran on weapons. A deal that they were honoring, which we reneged on.

Any proof they were honoring it?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/opinion/tehran-nuclear-sa...

Not detonating a bomb is the proof. They were allegedly 18 months from a bomb. It's been 5-6 years. No bomb.

...It's really worrying to me that the New Left seems to embrace nationalism and American exceptionalism just like the right. It means nobody is pushing back against creating wars. A lot of people will die for it unless people wise up.

Pompeo and Bolton probably both want to overthrow Iran.

Sanctions often have the reverse effect by entrenching state power and creating a outside force upon which to blame the problems. I.e. these onions cost a fortune because of the evil Americans.

Also the US does not have a great track record with inciting revolutions in Iran.

Foreign advisories have all kinds of failed/stupid strategies for inducing revolution! Hasn't stopped America from a never-ending sanction game with Iran or Russia from a never-ending election game with America or China from... the list goes on and on.

Actually the US has a stellar track record of inciting revolutions in Iran.

(just not intentionally)

The point of sanctions is not necessarily to incite revolution; as duaoebg pointed out, regimes like their scapegoats, and anyways modern historical anecdotes show that popular unrest is insufficient to incite revolution if the military remains loyal to the regime e.g. Tehran summer 2009.

Rather, sanctions attempt to align financial incentives of those in power with the country issuing sanctions. It may seem (thankfully) foreign to those in the West, but in autocratic places like Russia, Iran, and China, the people who control the policy of the state are generally also the people who have large stakes in the major economic engines of the state. Given that autocrats tend to be motivated by wealth at least as much as they are motivated by power, sanctions can force autocrats to try to negotiate with sanctioning countries, wherein the autocrat tries to adopt his policy as little as possible to the sanctioning country (so as to keep a grip on power) in order to get wealth flowing again.

Wait, so the U.S. is hoping for Iranians to revolt against a system it helped put in place? Hmmm

Yeah, exactly.

They supported the Iranian revolution expecting they will be able to control the outcome. That was ending the British relationship and starting an only American one with their oil.

This worked out pretty well in Saudi Arabia, which was very primitive and had very small population.

In the end,though,in Iran they are Muslims first and Iranians second, with a long History. They could have accepted all the money from infidels that they could get, and promised whatever to them, but their own religion says they could(and should) lie to infidels. So they did it.

(This scenario of popular revolt has never actually transpired.)

The world is a better [0] place if less people have nuclear weapons. "Outlawing business" (i.e. sanctions) are being used to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Thus it improves the world [1].

[0] Better is somewhat subjective I suppose, but I think we can pretty objectively say "more likely to hold a human civilization 100 years from now".

[1] It also undoubtedly makes the world worse in other ways, whether it improves the world more than it makes it worse is too political for me to be interested in discussing it with strangers on the internet.

> "Outlawing business" (i.e. sanctions) are being used to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

If you're talking about the current US sanctions, I think you're wrong. The deal ensured Iran could not develop nuclear weapons, through a strict regime of inspections. Without the deal, there are no inspections anymore and Iran is free to develop said weapons.

It seems that the real purpose of the sanctions is to weaken Iran so that its enemies in the region (Israel, Saudi Arabia) have a freer hand in doing as they please.

I'm talking about the sanctions that the article is, i.e. the pre-deal ones that Meng Wanzhou is accused of violating.

That said, the stated reason for the current sanctions is still nuclear weapons [0]. An accurate evaluation of why the US chose to withdraw from that deal is probably not possible with publicly available information. The limited analysis in your comment seems to assume that the deal was effective, something I don't think we have enough information to reliably evaluate, but I consider unlikely.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/politics/trump-speech-...

We absolutely have enough information to judge the deal effective: Has Iran detonated a bomb? No.

Before the deal (5 years ago), we were hearing that Iran was ~18 months away from a bomb. Yet, no bomb so far. Looks like the deal has been in the black for at least 3.5 years, to me.

The reason for pulling out of the deal had everything to do with domestic politics and, on a disorganized level, a bunch of yahoos' power fantasies. Nothing to do with Iran's behavior.

The metric of "has Iran detonated a bomb yet" is far to simplistic. What we should care about isn't how quickly Iran gets a bomb, but the probability that it ever does.

To see this via a argument to absurdity suppose that we had an alternate deal that was magically enforced and said "Iran will cease development of nuclear weapons for 10 years, and then we will give them an ICBM or two with warheads on top".

And, I mean, it's certainly possible that it was just a bunch of yahoo's and the deal was effective. It's also possible that the USes various spy agencies have information that made people legitimately concerned about the status quo. It would be outright negligent of the government to tell us (and thus Iran) which it is.

But they were on pace to have a bomb by now. And they don't.

So the deal is, at the absolute least, better than not having a deal. Or at least it was until we unilaterally tore it up after getting what we wanted.

> That said, the stated reason for the current sanctions is still nuclear weapons

Of course. And I think it's a blatant lie.

> The limited analysis in your comment seems to assume that the deal was effective, something I don't think we have enough information to reliably evaluate

The IAEA opinion is that we do, and that Iran has complied with the terms of the deal.

The IAEA opinion that I've seen is limited to "Iran has complied with the terms of the deal", not "the public has enough information to evaluate that the deal was effective at stopping nuclear weapons", or even "the deal is effective at stopping nuclear weapons development". The latter two (especially the middle one) being outside of the scope of what they discuss.

It's possible I missed something, I would be surprised though since the IAEA is pretty tight lipped. To quote an IAEA statement [0] made a week before the US withdrew from the deal

> In line with standard IAEA practice, the IAEA evaluates all safeguards-relevant information available to it. However, it is not the practice of the IAEA to publicly discuss issues related to any such information.

[0] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/statement-on-i...

The deal was negotiated and signed by US, Russia, China, France, UK, Germany, EU; and it is based on the "IAEA safeguards", a system of inspection and verification of the peaceful uses of nuclear materials as part of the NPT.

To suggest that all the major world powers would have signed a deal that leaves space for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and that the IAEA might have been happily certifying the compliance to the terms of the deal without bothering to make sure that Iran isn't actually developing nuclear weapons, would be supremely naive.

A more complete quote from the IAEA statement that you quoted is:

"The Agency’s overall assessment was that a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place after 2003. The Agency also assessed that these activities did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities. The same report stated that the Agency had no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009. Based on the Director General’s report, the Board of Governors declared that its consideration of this issue was closed."

In fact, what IAEA is diplomatically saying is "we don't give a damn what Netanyahu claims, we have reports and information that proves that the claims are not true and we don't have to discuss it any further".

> we have reports and information that proves that the claims are not true

I don't this is an accurate summary, rather it says

> we don't have reports and information that proves Iran is continuing to develop weapons.

And why would they? They aren't a spy agency, they are a monitoring agency. Assuming for the sake of argument that Iran was actively developing nuclear weapons they would have had to fuck up for the IAEA to be aware of it. The IAEA's purpose in all this is to force them to be circumspect, not to catch them if they are being sufficiently circumspect.

The United States also ignored the results of the IAEA's nuclear weapon investigation in Iraq, and invaded them anyway [0]. The United States never found any nuclear weapons, and sentiment of the appropriate subject matter experts today still remains that there were never any nuclear weapons.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War#Pre-war_events

But wouldn't the development of weapons require the diversion of nuclear materials? Surely the IAEA are monitoring that very closely. I would have thought that to be one of their primary responsibilities.

Yup we can only achieve world peace if it's just us who owns nuclear weapons. If the goal is really that, the U.S. wouldn't be flashing its nuclear arsenal.

The more people there are who can choose to use nuclear weapons, the greater the chance that someone will actually choose to use them.

Admittedly it's a very small sample size, but fwiw history directly contradicts this assertion.

Very true. When only one nation had atomic weapons, 100% of the nations with nuclear capabilities utilized them.

Could the same argument apply to personal firearms?

Especially when one of the countries has vowed, time and time again, to wipe another country off the map.

There's an easier way to do it that required no effort on the part of the current administration, which is to just not cancel the Iran deal.

> By torpedoing U.S. adherence to the accord, Trump has all but guaranteed its collapse, a move that opens the door to the unfettered resumption of Iran’s nuclear program and unleashes unpredictable escalatory pressures in an already volatile Middle East.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/05/08/a...

> Although the deal didn’t address every concern, it was successfully preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Trump has instead opted for an uncertain future, raising the risks of an Iranian bomb and a U.S-Iranian conflict.

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/trumps-iran-dea...

> The United States is left without good options moving forward. It is hard to see how this decision serves U.S. interests or regional stability.

https://www.rand.org/blog/2018/05/the-strategic-fallout-of-u...

In addition I believe there are long term costs for a country to be violating agreements for no discernible benefit.

The deal with Iran is not relevant.. since Huewai's and Meng's actions are from 5+ years ago, when Iran was subject to UN approved sanctions.

You're correct, although I would say the Iran deal is still relevant to Iran sanctions in the general sense.

The quotes are by individuals associated with the organizations, it doesn't appear to be the official position of the think-tanks. I think it is unfair to call the Brookings Institute a "right-wing pay-to-play lobbying group" but you are just sourcing from a left-leaning activist group.

My intention was to highlight the sources of funding for each -- not to make a pedantic left v right argument -- and people should question _all_ DC think tanks. Re: Brookings Institute, it's clear that their foreign sources of funding should cause pause:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution#Funding_...

Brookings and Rand are considered centrist, Rand sometimes center left, and Cato is conservative. I linked them because the case has already been made on the left, the case is usually being made to the right, so conservative sources would be relevant here.

That will certainly be from a North American viewpoint.

From the other countries perspective, it is a tremendous power imbalance.

The fact that any city of your country could be destroyed by an invading force in 3 seconds at zero cost for the invaders is for sure not very reassuring.

That actually happened in the US territory with native people, they were exterminated by outsiders with superior technology leaving almost not trace behind. This was costly for the invaders because the technology difference being great was not that great.

Right now, with the US(spaceX) able to put a rocket in any part of the world in 30 minutes with a nuclear head, the power imbalance is extreme. They do not have to risk a single life to destroy an entire city or nation!!

This is something that no country on earth should tolerate and they will not tolerate if if they have enough technology.

The crime is violating sanctions not exactly selling equipment.

the goal of sanctions is to place strong pressure on a country that does something we're strongly opposed to (ie try to build nuclear weapons) without having to have a military intervention

Iran and Isreal don’t get along

So why not punish Israel as well?

I’m not touching that one

Israel is much closer to the western point of view on human rights for one thing.

It's OK for there to be an objective right and wrong in a conflict.

Are you claiming that Israel is objectively right in this conflict? If so, can you clarify what you mean by that?

Many, many people would see the forced formation of a new country over the top of an existing country, against their will, as objectively wrong.

> over the top of an existing country

There was no existing country, it was British territory, and Ottoman, and others. The last time the place was an independent country it was part of the ancient Kingdom of Israel, around 2,200 years ago. And now it's an independent Israel again.

Same place, same people, same name, same capital. Different laws and government though.

There are and were different groups of people who existed there and considered that land their homeland.

Everyone who was living in the area that considered the land their homeland were welcome to stay, maintain their private property, and join the fledgling nation. Arabs who stayed and abided by the UN agreement were given first-class citizenship and many went on to become leaders, run successful businesses, and even serve as officers in the IDF. Unfortunately, many rejected the UN agreement and even rejected the terms for a second Palestinian state for the alternative of trusting the call of neighboring nations to flee and fight. Unfortunately those neighboring nations ended up reneging on their word after losing the wars that they started and were not so welcoming towards those who fled, setting the stage for the current quagmire.

To be fair, the people alive now were not in a decision-making position back during the formation of Israel, but I wanted to bring up the historical context since we're discussing the formation period.

More background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_supporters_of_Israel

"Do you have a flag?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEx5G-GOS1k

Exactly: arbitrary rules backed by a significant advantage in the use of force.

If you don’t understand the role of Iran in funding terror groups such as Hezbollah or their long, long history of terror support, notwithstanding their overt threats to “push Israel into the sea,” then explaining how it isn’t just about “selling telecom equipment” isn’t worth the time it would take.

Replace Iran with South Africa under apartheid and ask the same question.