The Seizure of an Iranian Tanker and the Lethal Toll of Sanctions

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/09/the-seizure-of-an-iranian-tanker-and-the-lethal-toll-of-sanctions/
Date Written:  2019-07-09
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23684

Sanctions against Syria are having a disastrous effect on the population. Comparisons to Iraq during the 1990s by someone who was there show the historic failure and potential further consequences of sanctions.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The seizure of an Iranian oil tanker allegedly bound for Syria by British Royal Marine commandos off Gibraltar is the latest episode in the long and disastrous history of economic sanctions in the Middle East. The UK claims that it is implementing EU sanctions on Syria, but the act will be seen by Tehran – and most other states – as the British enforcing US sanctions on Iran that the EU said it opposes....

Economic sanctions in the Middle East and elsewhere have invariably been a collective punishment of an entire people while leaders and their security forces come through unscathed. UN sanctions on Iraq between 1990 and 2003 did not stop Saddam Hussein building luxurious palaces and giant mosques while ordinary Iraqis were reduced to selling their furniture and crockery in the streets....

Fast forward 20 years and compare Syria now to Iraq then. Three million people are trapped in Idlib province under Russian and Syrian government bombardment. There is a festering guerrilla war in the Kurdish-controlled but half-Arab area east of the Euphrates river.

All of Syria is subjected to economic sanctions by the EU and US, which a leaked UN internal report in 2016 said were causing extreme suffering among ordinary Syrians.