[sorushn]

> I am NOT asking for the removal of the sanctions targeted at the Islamic Republic of Iran.

All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government. Just a bullying tactic by the US with zero moral justifications, despite how it's framed by the media.

[t1E9mE7JTRjf]

> All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government.

That requires some blind faith to believe. In that I don't think those applying them really expect overthrowing the government to result. I would guess sanctions are designed to hurt and weaken, to make them less of an adversary. Although that's a harder sell, so doesn't get presented that way.

[benced]

Seems like the moral justification would be to encourage overthrowing the government? The literature on sanction is mixed but zero is overstating it.

[sorushn]

Which is also not true, as we're seeing in Syria.

[JumpCrisscross]

> All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians

Objectively untrue. Many of the Russian sanctions, for example, targeted Putin’s inner circle.

[jeroenhd]

They may not be normal civilians, but many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials, which does make them civilians. In other cases sanctions are targeted at government officials personally rather than the parts of government they influence, like targeting their side business, their stock, or their personal property.

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.

[mschuster91]

> but many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials

That's the thing in a crony dictatorship: these people might not hold public office in name, but in practice they act under direct license, authority and orders of the dictator. We're already seeing this in Hungary, where close friends of the local de-facto-dictator Viktor Orban control almost all media and absolutely use that ownership to further entrench Orban's rule - it's hard to achieve political change when the media simply doesn't care about you.

And now, we're seeing the beginnings in the US, just from another angle - public kowtowing and open extortion, such as with Jimmy Kimmel who got cancelled after a threat to block a corporate merger, and it's not the first time either. And no, the fact that Disney walked back after their stock price took a decent dip doesn't mean that this is the last time such an event will take place.

[JumpCrisscross]

> many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials, which does make them civilians

By that definition Putin is a civilian.

More broadly: plenty of sanctions explicitly target military-only kit. Those are not “designed to hurt civilians,” though I guess a civilian working in a munitions factory might lose their job.

[tmnvdb]

Citation needed. As far is I know this is simply false. Different sanctions have different goals. Regime change is very rarely a goal. Often it is to reduce economic growth to keep/make the country weak, or to achieve some other goal. See for example sactions on India, which are definitely not meant to overthrow the indian government.

[theshrike79]

Sometimes it's both.

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

Implying that a change in government will lift the sanctions.

[kennywinker]

So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?

I’m aware there are consequences to sanctions, and the way they are implemented is often half-assed or hypocritical (e.g. the way that russian oil still flows) but to drop all sanctions…

Is that not like saying boycotts hurt employees who had nothing to do with the decisions so we should never boycott?

[eunos]

Or moving towards a multipolar equilibrium so that a pole can't unilaterally decide about those.

[kennywinker]

What does that mean? Like in a practical sense - russia declares war on ukraine… next step is? Move towards a multipolar equilibrium? How? How long does that take.

Yes ideally we’d live in a world where this bullshit doesn’t happen. But it does happen, so our choices are to respond with the tools we have NOW or not respond at all.

[sorushn]

> So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?

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.

[kennywinker]

> That's what the US has been doing since forever

And you think this is a good thing? Like we should be consistent and support all war crimes instead of just some of them?

Just because we do bad things, doesn’t make it right to do more bad things.

[jazzyjackson]

Other countries are perfectly welcome to sanction the USA, by all means tell me more about this bridge