The Sanctions Age

Ali Vaez on the fraught negotiations between Washington and Tehran.  In late February, the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran—a war that killed the country’s supreme leader, closed the Strait of Hormuz, pushed the global economy to the brink, and brought the Middle East closer to all-out conflagration than at any point in a generation.  Now, amid a ceasefire that has held without ever...

María José Espinosa on the unprecedented crisis in Cuba. For more than sixty years, the United States has waged an economic war against Cuba. The sanctions first imposed in 1960 were designed, in the words of a secret State Department memorandum, to bring about "hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."  Six decades later, the sanctions pressure has reached unprecedented levels....

Edward Fishman on how to fight an economic war. It has been an extraordinary year in American economic statecraft and economic warfare. When today’s guest last appeared on the show, it was April 2025. We spoke just days after Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs had thrown global markets into chaos. At the time, much of the conversation about economic warfare was speculation about what Trump...

Lisa Neal on understanding sanctions as a form of structural violence. Debates about sanctions tend to follow a familiar script. Who is being targeted? Will the measures change behavior? What are the economic costs to the sender country? These are legitimate questions. But they have a common blind spot: they describe sanctions from the outside, in the language of strategy and pressure, and rarely...

Sascha Lohmann on the impact of tariffs and sanctions on the German economy. Since the end of the Second World War, the world economy has operated on a set of shared assumptions: trade is mutually beneficial, interdependence engenders stability, and politics and economics are best kept separate. Germany built one of the strongest economies in the world on the basis of these assumptions. But they m...

Julia Grauvogel and Hana Attia on the challenges of sanctions termination. When sanctions make the news it is usually because new measures are being imposed on a country, company, or individual. But sometimes, the news is that sanctions are being lifted. As discussed in the first episode of this season, the Trump administration has offered Venezuela sanctions relief as part of the arrangement that...

Vittorio Maresca di Serracapriola on sanctions relief in Syria. It has been over a year since Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad fled to Moscow and a new government took power in Damascus. Assad’s ouster triggered one of the most rapid reversals of a sanctions regime in recent history. The European Union and the United States essentially raced to be the first to lift sanctions on Syria and most restr...

Alistair Millar on the challenges of sanctions reform. A quarter century ago, the United States had sanctioned fewer than 1000 companies, organizations, individuals, and vessels around the world. Today, that total is nearly 17,000. One reason why these measures are being used so expansively is the widespread perception that sanctions are “smart,” designed to be maximally effective while causing mi...

Alexandra Prokopenko on recent developments in the Russian economy. February marked the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It also marked the beginning of a new war. U.S. and Israel airstrikes on Iran have thrust the Persian Gulf into a devastating conflict with profound impacts for the global economy. Unprecedented strikes on energy infrastructure and disruptions in maritime t...

Francisco Rodríguez on the ouster of Nicolás Maduro. On January 3 of this year, American special forces captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and extricated him to the United States. But the operation did not oust the Venezuelan regime. Instead, in the subsequent days, the Trump administration announced its intention to work with Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodriguez. President Trump took effect...

Eva Dou on the rise of Chinese technology giant Huawei.  Few companies better embody the promise and peril of China’s rise than Huawei. For nearly three decades, Huawei has steadily climbed towards the peak of the global telecommunications industry—first as a supplier of telecom infrastructure, then as a maker of smartphones, and more recently as a driving force behind Chinese ambitions in 5G, sem...

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj on the "snapback" of sanctions in Iran.  Last week, the host of The Sanctions Age , Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, was interviewed by Derek Davison for an episode of American Prestige , a podcast that takes a comprehensive look at American foreign policy and international affairs. Derek and Esfandyar discussed the death of the Iran nuclear deal, which died last week aft...

Gregory Brew on why oil sanctions no longer work.  Few sanctions have been used as aggressively as oil sanctions. These measures are meant to hit oil producing “rogue states” where it hurts, starving governments of vital revenues and forcing changes in policy. But look around the world today and you will see a growing list of countries defying oil sanctions. Iran is still pumping. Russia is still...

Nicholas Trickett on how Russia approaches the fiscal pressure of sanctions.  Russia is one of the world’s largest economies. It’s a top energy exporter and a major supplier of wheat, fertilizers, wood, and metals. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Western governments have tried to squeeze Russia’s revenues through unprecedented sanctions, price caps, and export controls. How Russia’s economy respond...

Jeff Stein on the impact of sanctions in a small Guatemalan town.  The small Guatemalan town of El Estor was once a bustling mining hub, home to two major nickel mines that provided thousands of jobs and sustained the local government. In 2022, U.S. sanctions shuttered those mines almost overnight, triggering massive job losses, starving the town of public revenues, and collapsing small businesses...

Karam Shaar on the legacy of sanctions in Syria.  On December 8, 2024, Bashar Al-Assad fled Syria, bringing an end to the 13-year civil war that had devastated the country. Syrians who had endured years of conflict and deprivation, took to the streets in celebration. They were suddenly able to imagine a new future for their country. Assad’s fall caught the international community by surprise, and...

Erich Ferrari on the inner workings of OFAC.  There is a powerful office in the Treasury Department called the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC. You could argue that the officials in OFAC are the most powerful government functionaries in the world. They are the functionaries who sanction companies, organizations, and individuals, by adding these entities to a list called the Specially Des...

Golnar Motevalli on her experiences reporting from sanctioned Iran.  Covering sanctions is complicated. Editors commissioning reports from countries like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela mainly want stories that focus on security or political issues, but on the ground, economic disruptions are what everyone is talking about. Foreign correspondents based in sanctioned countries are not just reporting on...

Kyle Chan on Chinese innovation in the face of sanctions and export controls.  Over the past several years, the United States has escalated its use of sanctions and export controls in the context of growing strategic competition with China. A central goal has been to contain China’s rise in high-tech industries—especially semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and clean energy—by cutting off acc...

Francisco Rodríguez on the global death toll of sanctions.  In the 1990s, UN sanctions imposed on Iraq led to a humanitarian crisis, with reports of a rapid increase in excess mortality, especially among children. In the early 2000s, policymakers responded to this crisis by vowing to use “smart sanctions” in the future, measures that would target elites while sparing civilians, thereby limiting th...

Edward Fishman on Trump's approach to economic statecraft.  The world is still reeling from Trump’s announcement of major retaliatory tariffs targeting all of America’s trading partners, which came back in April. First, Trump announced a basic 10% tariff on imports from all countries. Then, higher tariffs were applied to 60 countries. Soon after, Trump announced he would pause the implementat...

Erica Moret on the humanitarian harms of sanctions. In just about every country that has been targeted by a major sanctions program—including Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Venezuela, to name a few—we can observe significant humanitarian consequences. Sanctions contribute to shortages of essential goods, hinder access to healthcare, and exacerbate poverty and social instability. Understanding the hu...

Stephen Fallon on how American regulators captured global banks.  US authorities have taken advantage of the unique position of the dollar in the global economy to exercise significant control over the global financial system. When the U.S. introduces new financial regulations or sanctions regimes, global banks take notice, and tend to modify their behaviors to conform with American guidance. Step...

Gerard DiPippo on the intensifying economic competition between the United States and China.  When the White House recently announced it would increase tariffs on a range of Chinese goods, it used striking language to explain why the measures were necessary. The White House statement claimed that “China’s unfair trade practices concerning technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation...

Henry Smith on how global CEOs are navigating the sanctions landscape.  In recent decades, multinational companies have pursued market opportunities around the world, creating complex supply chains and financial structures in the process. But what was once a world of expanding opportunity is increasingly a world of encroaching risks. With sanctions and export controls imposed on a growing list of...