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18-Oct-12 World View -- Are Iranian sanctions harming civilians and accomplishing nothing?


Switzerland may be preparing for war


** 18-Oct-12 World View -- Are Iranian sanctions harming civilians and accomplishing nothing?
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 18#e121018




Contacts:
Accusations increase that sanctions are harming innocent Iranian civilians
What's the purpose of sanctions?
Switzerland may be preparing for war
France says military intervention will begin 'in a matter of weeks'


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, European Union, Iran, Japan, Poland,
South Africa, North Korea, Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu,
Switzerland, Greece, Italian, Mali,
Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS,
Ansar Dine, Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, AQIM, France

Maybe I missed the boat somewhere, but I thought the purpose of sanctions was to hurt the Iranian people and cause them to pressure their government to change directions. I suppose it's hard for some politicians to just say that.

OLD1953 wrote:Maybe I missed the boat somewhere, but I thought the purpose of sanctions was to hurt the Iranian people and cause them to pressure their government to change directions. I suppose it's hard for some politicians to just say that.

Politicians do sometimes say that the purpose of sanctions is to
cause "regime change."

In this case, there are two purposes for sanctions.

The first purpose of the sanctions IS to hurt the Iranian people and cause internal discord. The rampant inflation caused by the sanctions is effective in this regard.

The second purpose of the sanctions is to increase the price/cost of the devices that must necessarily be bought outside of Iran to maintain their enrichment effort. While this might be seen as moucenuts; it exerts pressure where the Iranians are most vulnerable - foreign currency, as almost everything that goes into the enrichment process must be bought outside of Iran proper. Certainly Iran can, over time, develop the expertise necessary to sustain their enrichment effort; but these are long term efforts, and are a very costly development efforts - they require skill, and cash. Some thing that the sanctions are specifically designed to deny to the Iranian regime.