dimanche 8 mars 2026

VU DU DROIT - IRAN: ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES (1979-2025) le 8.03.2026

IRAN: ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES (1979-2025)

Regis de Castelnau

mars 8

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As subscribers know, this substack, which is part of Régis de Castelnau’s small media outlet “Vu Du Droit,” offers two subscription options: an open subscription and a paid subscription. We strive to strike a balance in order to equip ourselves with the material resources necessary to carry out our fight for re-information. Normally, feature articles should be reserved for subscribers who make a (modest) contribution, while current affairs, news, and opinion pieces should be available to all. After eight months, however, there is a clear imbalance in favor of the open section. We imagine that readers will not complain...

The article we are publishing today, written by Gérard Funffrock, engineer and doctor of contemporary history (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), is one of our feature articles, but given the current events and the need to clarify the situation in Iran and its origins, it seemed obvious to us that it should be “open.”

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IRAN: ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES (1979-2025)

What are the origins of the economic difficulties faced by the Iranian regime?

The US is among the powers that impose the most sanctions on small countries, small nations, small states, or those considered as such, but which do not submit to the hegemon. These countries and their governments are considered hostile to the security of the United States. Richard Nephew’s book theorizes the practice of these sanctions (The Art of Sanctions), whose stated objective is to cause the economic collapse of the targeted country. To what end? To incite the subjugated populations to revolt against the leaders of the punished country, including through the intervention of undercover agents tasked with arming and inciting the population to fight with the avowed aim of overthrowing the regime in place and dismantling the targeted country in order to take undue advantage of its wealth (Alibaba’s cave, gas, oil, minerals). From the American point of view, this objective has been “successful” since 2003 in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, for example, but the consequences have been devastating for the stability of the Middle East and the descent into hell of the populations (famines, population displacement, bombing victims). More recently, in Iran, in conjunction with opponents, particularly those of the former Shah regime and its terrorist dictatorship via the Savak, the US and Israel have coordinated regular interventions by the CIA and Mossad for several years in order to change the regime, force it to capitulate, and then dismantle and destroy it. These attempts have so far failed. Iran is a great nation that is neither Iraq nor Syria nor Venezuela. Irania delenda est is the slogan that aims to destroy the unity of the Iranian nation with a view to its dismemberment and fragmentation. On the other hand, this strategy of sanctions applied to Russia since 2014 has not really had the desired effect, quite the contrary. We must have compassion for the Iranian people, regardless of the nature of their political regime, which emerged in 1979 from the economic collapse of the Shah’s Iran, which had been subject to Anglo-American companies since the 1953 coup that overthrew the unfortunate Mossadegh, a democrat and hardly a communist.

According to Joris Cuynet, in his book Iran under sanctions. A society under pressure, published in 2022, the author indicates that the sanctions were particularly severe. As soon as the Shiites came to power in 1979, at the time of the victory of the Islamist revolution, the US sanctioned the Iranians after the hostage-taking at the American embassy: Iranian assets in the US were frozen. In 1980, the US used Saddam Hussein to get Iraq to attack Iran (1 million deaths on both sides, impoverishment of Iran). In 1995, an economic embargo was imposed on Iran, and in 2013, sanctions were imposed on the automotive sector. In response to the nuclear program revealed in 2005, the EU, after sanctions on human rights, imposed an embargo on the oil and financial sectors in 2010 and 2012; in 2018 (Trump 1), the US also imposed sanctions on countries that trade with Iran in dollars. The UN imposed sanctions on arms and nuclear technology. In 2019, Trump 1 unilaterally denounced the treaty concluded with Iran on uranium enrichment. The sanctions were tightened. The daily life of the Iranian people gradually sank into poverty and sometimes into destitution, as in 2020 during Covid, even though the country has oil and gas resources that it cannot freely exploit. The Iranian people’s hatred of the US and Israel is understandable, a hatred that is exploited (but can we blame them?) by the government to forge national unity...