Then?

This works about a third of the time [1].

What does is incentivising domestic policy changes. We saw that with the nuclear deal. But then Trump blew it up because Obama did it.

(On another level, sanctions degrade capability. If there is no room for peace, at least you can limit your adversary’s economy and thus martial production. If regime change randomly happens, you can use lifting sanctions to blow oxygen on the new government’s flame [2].)

[1] https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/863435/mod_resource/conte... Table 6.1, page 159

[2] https://the307.substack.com/p/how-sanctions-function-as-a-to...

Very easy to say. Quite hard to pull off. People in authoritarian countries have very little leverage and would like just to live fullfilling lives.

I’m not saying ”don’t do sanctions” but this mechanistic outcome is highly improbable.

”perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.”

Um - the most polite way of stating this is that this view of how political systems work is highly delusional at best.

Ruling party depends on _elite_ _compliance_.

Iranians had several mass uprisings that were suppressed by the military. And the top military and religious authorities in Iran have no problems whatsoever living well, even with all the sanctions.

Just like the Russian elites, btw. They can't visit France as easily anymore, but there's always Dubai available. That can't care less where your money comes from.

That's the theory, but has it ever worked?

That something that never works (not even in cases where it has been going on for multiple generations, as in the case of Cuba or Iran) keeps being tried makes it impossible to believe that the intention is making it "work" in the sense you mean. The sanctions are just to sink those countries for political interest. Which in some cases makes sense (e.g. Russia, as it's invading Ukraine and sinking its economy can be a deterrent in that respect), but in others is definitely evil.

Then half a decade shows that point is not relevant or, the overthrowing is not the point at all.

I too wished the wolrd was that simple. But there are dictatorships, who kill, slaughter, coerce, ... and also all the international affairs from which those people are kept an outsider with zero say by the said government. I don't think we can reduce it to "it's people's fault".

No, that's for consumption by population of the sanctioning country. The people in the know know very well that that never works.

The point is for every other country in the world to see how much it hurts if you don't follow the wishes of USA. Classic mafia strategy.

The exception were the sanctions on Russia at the start of the Ukraine war. Those were unprecedented (including the freezing of the national bank assets and blocking of Swift) and it looks like the western powers really believed that those sanctions will cause economic collapse and regime change in Russia.

We don't sell them weapons, and we try to limit dual-use technology from being freely available.

Defense tech uses a lot of open source software and commercially available software - letting a regime simply buy technological advantage it can't cultivate is a good way to lose that advantage and then also lose the culture which can create it.

Especially if you’ve just been dumb enough to re-elect that nasty leadership / government on behalf of (and at the behest of) the people who benefit off having that ruling party in office.

The key upside of democracy imo is then that most people do not see a reason to use violence; They can vote and never need to withdraw consent that extremely.

The political situation in Russia is more stable now than before the war. Putin is certainly happy.

As for sanctions:

> Iran is not the only example in which sanctions have resulted in unintended consequences. Since 1970, unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. have achieved foreign policy goals in just about 13% of cases, according to one study. A recent Congressional Research report evaluating U.S. sanctions in Venezuela found that sanctions “exacerbated an ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis caused by government mismanagement and corruption that has promoted 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee.” U.S. sanctions also exacerbated humanitarian crises in North Korea, reported UNICEF, putting 60,000 vulnerable children at risk of starvation due to limited humanitarian aid.

https://washingtondc.jhu.edu/news/do-sanctions-actually-work...

Please evaluate the historical failure of sanctions. As someone else have mentioned, Putin is happy despite the sanctions, but everyone else is not. These sanctions (from US, EU, etc.) hurt the people, not the people in the Governments. Come on, for the current price of <include basic food that used to be cheap> I used to be able to buy at least 3-5x more BEFORE the sanctions. Talk about sanctions exacerbating economic crisis. They will never learn, I guess, unless intended, but if it is intended, then surely it goes against everything they claim to stand for, as someone else has already elaborated.

It's like your local bakery refusing to sell a donut to a random iranian guy.

There is some nuance here. While some "sanctions" may not be applicable, the United States has a concept called deemed export, where exposing a non-US Person (~non-citizen with no green card) to technologies in the US, for example during the course of regular employment, can be problematic. Depending on the foreign citizen's nationality, the level of exposure that is deemed problematic can vary. For Iranian citizens, it is basically almost everything unless open-source. This is why all FANGs regularly apply for a deemed export license before commencing employment of foreign individuals with problematic nationalities.

Sanctions absolutely do apply to Iranians (even dual citizens) anywhere in the world, albeit less intensively.

> not everyone in Iran is Iranian

Swing and a miss. Sanctions are primarily against Iranian nationals, and extend to any non-Iranian who violated the sanctions. If you visit Iran as an American/Chinese/Antractican you don't automatically end up sanctioned.

> The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders

And that makes it okay? Nuking civilians can also be a tactic to pressure the leaders into surrender. And nukes may take fewer lives than decades of intense sanctions.

Depriving Iranians of legal access to Western tools opens the market to locals. I suspect that the market is big enough to build a business.

It'difficult to assess gdp impact in this particular area. It's not really dependent on blockable imports.

Various tools hosted on Github can be considered dual-use (i.e. AES/TLS libraries). Furthermore, Microsoft was made to apply sanctions against Karim Khan of the ICC for his involvement in investigating the genocide of Palestinians; I doubt Microsoft would be granted an exception so they can serve Hamas' greatest supporter after that.

I don't know if Microsoft has applied for any exceptions, but even if they did, I doubt they'd be able to get them. That's on top of the probability of bad publicity ("Microsoft wants to cut deal with Iran") and the lack of incentive you mentioned.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the United States Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.

You either kill someone, or become someone's bitch on the first day, then you'll be alright.

(It's an Office Space reference, btw, but our prisons are genuinely inhumane and not rehabilitative.)

"Your country is sanctioned because your government is being a global ass, wink-wink"

Implying that a change in government will lift the sanctions.

That's what the US has been doing since forever, even actively participating in the war crimes. If you think any of the stated reasons for the sanctions are real, I have a bridge to sell you.

There are sanctions targeting governments specifically, but usually government sanctions also target civilians. You can't exactly expect a sanctioned government to be transparent, it'll hide its government business under company names if you let it.

Not really. The number of people who might change their minds and thus swing the result either way is indeed small. But it isn't accurate to say they are the ones that choose.

The people in guaranteed states/counties still choose; it's just that almost always choose the same answer.

But even that doesn't mean they can be ignored. They can be ignored at voting time, but before that political parties have to take them into account. They basically determine where the centre is. For example they are the reason the American centre is so much further right than the UK centre.

If you took American parties and held an election of them in the UK you would find that all those reliably conservative counties who you would say don't have any effect on the result are suddenly not so supportive of the right-wing option.

FPTP is still dumb and frustrating though.

It's easy to call for action from your comfortable life.

No, the populace does not bear the same responsibility for the country's actions in all countries. Swiss with direct democracy bear much higher responsibility than systematically oppressed populace in other countries.

Some even line up to vote for sham Presidential elections of the Mullah regime, whose turnout legitimizes the regime, while inside the United States! Being Stanford educated does not prevent this seemingly cognitive dissonance or perhaps deception; it actually makes that more likely.