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Western economic sanctions and Iran 's survival strategy : Comments
By Abolghasem Bayyenat, published 21/1/2013Whether Western crippling economic sanctions will meet their ostensible political goal of bringing change in Iran 's nuclear position is a different story.
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1. The people who suffer most from them are the ordinary folk who are typically already suffering the misery of a repressive and tyrannical regime. The kind of government that is usually sanctioned couldn’t care less about this.
2. They provide the perfect excuse for dictators to blame economic and policy failures on foreign enemies and aggressors (Saddam was especially adept at this)
3. They cause long-term structural harm to sanctioned economies that can take decades to repair (witness South Africa)
4. It is seldom possible to make sanctions completely effective; getting around the system is the perfect opportunity for the corrupt and fraudulent (AWB)
5. They almost never work. Cuba has been under embargo by the USA since 1960, yet Fidel Castro’s iron grip on power was broken only when ill-health prompted him to hand the presidency to his brother Raul (in the fine tradition of autocrats keeping power in the family).