By Esfandyar Batmanghelidj and Nicholas Mulder
April 16, 2019
Financial wars damage and disfigure economies as much as military ones. Countries ravaged by sanctions need reconstruction, too.
The sanctions just keep on coming. The reactions were swift when the Trump administration designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, in a move heralded by the White House as “the first time that the United States has ever named a part of another government as .”
In Tehran, leaders Iran’s political spectrum condemned the designation, with members of parliament showing solidarity by attending the next in combat fatigues. In Washington, experts saw the a risky political provocation that would do little to add to Iran—a country already targeted by dozens of and pieces of legislation such as the 2010 Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act and Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
But these objections have largely overlooked the underlying logic designations despite limited gains in economic pressure. A , legal, and surveillance infrastructure now exists that to the maintenance of economic sanctions. Today, sanctions proponents are actively seeking to apply new restrictions that make the eventual lifting of sanctions more difficult, in preserve the emergent sanctions-industrial complex – a network of government agencies, law firms, technology providers, tanks with a vested interest in the unceasing expansion programs.
Published by Foreign Policy on April 15, 2019 – continue reading this important article here
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Also from Foreign Policy – “How Europe could blunt U.S. Iran sanctions without Washington lifting a finger”
