The Leader of the Islamic Revolution said in a meeting with the president of Belarus: “The countries that have been sanctioned by the United States should cooperate with each other and form a united front to destroy the weapon of sanctions. We believe that this is achievable.”
In this note, written by Masoud Barati and Sayyid Hamed Torabi, researchers in the field of international relations and sanctions, the requirements for cooperation between the countries victimized by sanctions have been discussed.
Sanctions have become a strategic tool in the foreign policy of the US government in the new century with the gradual change that it has undergone. There were sanctions beforehand as well, but ever since the US government decided to use the financial and banking infrastructures as a weapon, the nature of sanctions changed. The term “sanction” in this period replaces the old terms such as “embargo,” which is an indication of a change in the nature of sanctions.
The enactment of the Patriot Act following the 9/11 attacks was the starting point of this move — a move that, according to David Cohen, who was in charge of implementing sanctions at the US Treasury Department, became the main tool for advancing US foreign policy, along with war and diplomacy. The sanctions, taking a greater step, entered a new era with the enactment of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010, with the global banking system acting like a weapon in the hands of US statesmen.
Now that more than 20 years have passed since the US’ financial weaponization, and many countries have been targeted by this weapon, it is a good opportunity for the countries victimized by this weapon to pursue cooperation to deal with it as an effective strategy. In order for this strategy to be implemented properly and to make fewer mistakes in this direction, it is necessary to pay attention to the following points:
The countries victimized by the sanctions weapon should have a strategic understanding of this weapon. The main element of this strategic understanding is understanding the place of sanctions in the policy of the US and its allies. They make use of sanctions as a strategic weapon. The experiences of Iran and Russia in this field are very clear. As a result, as long as this weapon is effective and can meet their political goals, it will not be discarded, and even its use will develop and become more complete. The effectiveness of the sanctions weapon is in creating economic instability in the target country and disrupting its economic balance. Sanctions are designed and applied for each country based on the economic structure of that country. The sanctions are designed in such a way that they can synergize with the structural weaknesses of the target country’s economy and create instability there. The more the sanctions can destabilize and put economic pressure on the target country, the more enthusiastic the sanctioners will become about using the sanctions tool. In their eyes, economic instability and pressure are the preludes to the realization of foreign policy goals or the success of sanctions. The success of sanctions means changing the behavior of the target country.
If the target country is willing to change its behavior as a result of the pressure caused by the sanctions, it will mean the success of the sanctions from the point of view of the US and its allies, and it will increase their motivation to develop this weapon. For example, after the interim Geneva Accord, the US officials repeatedly pointed out that the path of pressure on Iran will still continue. As Obama said only 14 days after the agreement between Iran and G5+1 in 2013: “I have said this constantly that I will not take any option off the table. The broader architecture of sanctions will remain in place and we will continue to enforce them vigorously.”
With the above explanation, the politicians of the sanctioned countries should know that at the strategic level, they should not make a decision in such a way that the sanctioners feel that the sanctions weapon has been successful and, as a result, further invest in using this weapon more broadly. The country victimized by sanctions should increase its power to support this strategic decision, meaning it should plan and act to reduce the effects and pressures of sanctions.
The countries victimized by the sanctions weapon should increase their scientific knowledge of this weapon. The countries imposing sanctions have been active in the scientific knowledge of this weapon since the beginning of using the sanctions weapon, and this activeness is still ongoing. Currently, the greatest amount of scientific activities to understand sanctions and their dimensions and effects are carried out in the countries imposing them. For example, the US Congressional Research Service publishes at least two reports on Iran annually entitled “Iran Sanctions,” which examine the latest state of the sanctions laws and their effects. This center published a report entitled “The Overview of Venezuela Sanctions” after the increase of US sanctions against Venezuela, and by dividing the US sanctions against Venezuela, it monitored and published the implementation of each of these sanctions. The same happened with Russia as well. This center publishes separate, updated reports on 35 sanctions programs of the US Treasury Department over time. In addition, think tanks in the West are continuously working on monitoring and understanding the sanctions. For example, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a bipartisan American think tank located in Washington, DC, that specializes in security and defense policies and American national security approaches. One of the main sections of this think tank is the “Energy, Economics & Security” section, which specifically focuses on international sanctions. Its published reports and articles include two observational and scientific parts. The observational section includes reports under “Sanctions by the Numbers.” These reports are published regularly and compare the number of sanctions imposed by the US concerning the topic of the report during a certain period of time. They provide the reader with a comprehensive view of sanctions imposed under a specific issue. For example, the report “Sanctions by the Numbers: US Secondary Sanctions” divides the number of individuals and entities related to Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Syria based on being on the sanctions list and secondary sanctions on them and compares their number in the era of Obama and Trump. Or the report “Sanctions by the Numbers: Spotlight on Afghanistan” compares, on the one hand, the number of sanctions imposed on Afghanistan concerning various issues of terrorism, relations with Iran, and drugs, and, on the other hand, sanctions imposed during the era of different US presidents. The Atlantic Council is also another active think tank in the field of observation and scientific activity regarding sanctions. This think tank, which considers its duty to strengthen US leadership and participation in the world with the cooperation of allies and partners to create solutions for global challenges and create a new world order, deals with both observational and scientific fields of sanctions in a specialized manner. The Atlantic Council has established a section called “Global Sanctions Dashboard” under the “Trade and Economy” section, which continuously monitors sanctions. In addition to this, academic centers also focus on understanding sanctions. For example, the Center on Global Energy — School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University[1] is a research center located in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Richard Nephew, the author of the book The Art of Sanctions, is one of the main members of this center in the field of sanctions. The reports of this center focus on two areas. Monitoring sanctions related to the energy sector and analyzing the future and strategies of sanctions. For instance, in the case of Iran, the report “Brief History of US Sanctions on Iran” [2]is an observational report that describes US sanctions against Iran in four time periods and identifies the most important feature of each period.
Careful attention should be paid to the fact that although observing the sanctioners’ aforementioned scientific activities can be helpful to the country victimized by sanctions, they cannot meet all the scientific needs of that country to deal with the sanctions. The countries victimized by sanctions should engage in scientific activity in this field based on their experiences and needs, and start sharing and defining joint scientific activities at a higher level. Currently, this important issue is seriously neglected, and some even think that there is no need for this kind of activity, and if needed, they can benefit from the activities carried out in the countries imposing sanctions. This view is very dangerous, and it is as if one receives war software from the enemy during a military war with it. This way, the outcome of the war will be predictable from the very beginning.
Not all of the countries victimized by sanctions are the same. It should be noted that the level and scope of sanctions against countries are different, because the economic and even geographical features of each country are effective in the type and extent of sanctions imposed on that country. For example, the sanctions that prohibit the issuance of visas by the United States to the citizens of a country have a much greater effect on a country like Cuba than on Iran. Or, due to the geography and structure of the Americas, Venezuela is mainly included and suffers from the primary sanctions of the United States, but Iran’s main problem is the secondary sanctions of the United States. Also, the size of Russia’s economy and Europe’s dependence on this country have so far not convinced the US to impose secondary sanctions against Russia. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the sanctioned countries face different features and levels of sanctions. As a result, the grounds for cooperation to counter this weapon are different from country to country. A certain solution cannot be prescribed for all countries. Two-by-two cooperation in different formulas should be formed. These formulas require independent design. Providing the same solutions to everyone cannot lead to the formation of cooperation. It is not possible to provide the same prescription for all countries.
The countries victimized by sanctions should pay attention to the infrastructures of imposing sanctions. The sanctions weapon operates on the basis of a set of infrastructures built into the international system. Because most of these infrastructures have been technical and economic in nature, few have expected them to be turned into weapons. For this reason, a security-centered viewpoint toward these infrastructures has received less attention, and most countries did not and do not have the necessary plans to face and defend against them. Lack of attention to this deep dependence on these infrastructures has in turn increased the economic vulnerability of the countries victimized by sanctions. For example, the most important financial infrastructure in the world, on which the sanctions system is based, is the universal dollar payment system. The widespread use of the dollar both in global trade and in central bank reserves has caused the global banking system to be seriously dependent on the dollar. This infrastructure is a product of the Bretton Woods Summit, and it seems that the US has imposed this design on the world with open eyes.
The countries victimized by sanctions should know this infrastructure and its wide dimensions well and plan to reduce their dependence in the first step and reduce its power globally. Another infrastructure that is effective in increasing the effectiveness of financial sanctions is the standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). By increasing transparency in international and domestic banking interactions of countries, these standards create the ground for a more precise effect of sanctions and increasing compliance with the sanctions system. At the commercial level, trade control regimes and projects such as P2P, which are pursued by the European Union with the support of the United States in various countries, are among these infrastructures. Recently, some of the infrastructures have also been used more seriously as sanctions weapons. The “oil price cap” sanction imposed against Russia by Western countries is designed and implemented based on the maritime transport infrastructure and the insurance system that serves it. Leading in advanced technologies has also provided a favorable platform for the use of the sanctions weapon. The countries victimized by sanctions must accurately identify these infrastructures and plan to reduce their dependence on them and, if possible, plan to weaken them, because the existence of these infrastructures increases the power of the United States in imposing sanctions. For this reason, Wally Adeyemo, the current Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, on the sidelines of an International Monetary Fund meeting at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, asks Western countries to work hard to maintain the current global banking and financial structure. In that meeting, he says that the reason for the success of the sanctions is the governance of this structure.
One of the important ways to weaken the infrastructure used by the sanctions weapon is to create parallel and alternative infrastructures. In this context, cooperation between the countries victimized by sanctions will be very effective. For example, building a new infrastructure for interbank message exchanges that can serve as an alternative and then as a competitor to the SWIFT messaging network. Fortunately, good measures have been taken in this direction by Iran, Russia, and China.
In sum, the countries victimized by sanctions must make serious efforts to re-design the architecture of their economies. As mentioned, the sanctions weapon is designed and applied for each country according to the economy of that country. The sanctions weapon tries to create instability and economic pressure by exploiting the economic weaknesses and fault lines of the target country. Therefore, the country victimized by sanctions must seriously and at an appropriate speed re-design its economic architecture. This job is very complicated and difficult. In order to follow this path, the governance power of the country victimized by sanctions must be greatly improved. Changing the architecture means confronting the interests of the beneficiary groups of the existing architecture. Managing this confrontation is very difficult. The countries victimized by sanctions can help each other as well in this field.
(The views expressed in this article are author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Khamenei.ir.)
[1] The Center on Global Energy ـSchool of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University
[2] Brief History of US Sanctions on Iran
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