Day: May 28, 2024

On April 13, Iran launched an unprecedented retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel, leading the U.S. and its allies to reach once again for their favorite weapon of war—sanctions.

This knee-jerk reaction was as predictable as it was ill-founded, according to the scholarly research. In Nicholas Mulder’s 2022 treatise The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, he traces the history of sanctions from the blockades in World War I to today’s morass of economic sanctions. Mulder concludes that “the historical record is relatively clear: most economic sanctions have not worked.”

Mulder’s treatise was followed by the book Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests by Agathe Demarais. Drawing on her experience as an economic policy adviser for the diplomatic corps of the French Treasury, Demarais observes that sanctions tend to unite rather than isolate countries that are at odds with the U.S. and its allies, thereby transforming the geopolitical landscape and global economy to the detriment of U.S. influence.

The case of Iran is particularly illustrative of these points. In the recent How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare, authors Vali Nasr, Narges Bajoghli, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez present a detailed study on the long-term impacts of economic sanctions on Iran. Nasr is an Iranian-born distinguished professor of international affairs and Middle East studies, a veteran diplomat, and a member of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He and his collaborators studied the economic data and conducted long-form oral history interviews with 80 residents of Iran. The authors demonstrate that decades of Western sanctions, including the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign of 2018, have neither modified Iran’s international behavior in ways intended by policy makers nor precipitated any semblance of regime change.

Instead, sanctions have inflicted severe hardships on ordinary Iranians. The middle class has shrunk significantly from 45 percent in 2017 to 30 percent in 2020. If that wasn’t bad enough, Nasr and his colleagues estimate that the death toll attributable to the humanitarian catastrophes triggered by sanctions—such as food shortages and the breakdown of critical medical systems—has amounted to “hundreds of thousands.”

By imposing sanctions, the U.S. sought to crush Iran’s economy and make life so difficult for ordinary Iranians that they would rise up and either change the regime’s behavior or overthrow it altogether. However, this strategy relied on the assumption that Iranians would blame their misery on their own government and not those imposing the sanctions. Rather than blaming their government, Iranians have experienced a classic rally-’round-the-flag effect with sanctions inadvertently solidifying support for the regime. By creating animus against the U.S., sanctions have turned Iran’s hurting middle class into either de facto or de jure supporters of Iran’s leaders.

This is reflected in the interviews conducted by Nasr and his colleagues. Hamid, an interviewee and a disaster management specialist in Iran’s civil society sector, said of sanctions: “All they’ve done is make the Revolutionary Guard more powerful. Those of us in civil society are suffocating.”

Reza, a disillusioned university professor, echoed Hamid’s concerns: “If it’s not the nuclear issue, it’s our ballistic missiles. If it’s not our ballistic missiles, it’ll be human rights. If it’s not human rights, [the U.S.] will find another reason [to sanction Iran].”

Furthermore, Nasr and his co-authors contend that sanctions have driven the Iranian government to adopt more defensive and aggressive postures—the very behaviors that spurred the U.S. to impose sanctions on Iran in the first place. This pattern of behavior, where a sanctioned state becomes more militaristic and risk-taking, is well-documented and aligns with what economic theory predicts about actors with “nothing to lose.” This was highlighted by William L. Silber in The Power of Nothing to Lose: The Hail Mary Effect in Politics, War, and Business, in which he elucidates how extreme pressure during times of “war” can lead nations to take bold, often reckless actions.

It’s clear that the sanctions landscape is littered with failure—not just in Iran but also in Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and, most recently, Russia. Despite their dismal track record, a 2021 Treasury Department report showed that the use of sanctions had surged by a stunning 900 percent since 2000. The persistence in using this tool highlights a disconnect between expected and actual outcomes in U.S. foreign policy strategy.

If the U.S. and its allies had aimed to create a more moderate Iran or change the regime with sanctions, they have failed. What is needed is a more nuanced and effective foreign policy that rests on diplomacy and does not inadvertently strengthen the very behaviors and regimes the U.S. aims to modify.

• This article was also published in Reason Magazine 

Speeches by Joe Biden and Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gained widespread media coverage. On the other hand, the speech given last week by Dr. Anthony Fauci at Columbia University failed to get the attention it deserved.

Fauci spoke of “egregious distortions of reality” and told the students: “Sadly, elements of our society are driven by a cacophony of falsehoods, lies, and conspiracy theories that get repeated often enough that after a while, they stand largely unchallenged, ominously leading to an insidious acceptance of what I call ‘the normalization of untruth.’ … And we as much or more than anyone else need to push back on these distortions of truth and reality.” Critics were quick to push back.

“Everything he just accused all of us of is the stuff that he and his cadre of lunatics have been doing,” said Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report. Fauci, longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), maintained that he had not funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to perform dangerous gain-of-function research. On May 16, the day after Fauci’s speech, Lawrence Tabak, former acting director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), testified that NIAID did indeed fund gain-of-function research at the WIV through the EcoHealth Alliance.

Sen. Rand Paul, a medical doctor and author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-up, accused Fauci of lying to Congress about that funding. That didn’t come up in Fauci’s speech, and neither did the 6-foot social distancing rule, which Fauci now acknowledges “just sort of appeared,” without any scientific basis. Also missing was Fauci’s claim to represent science, and the former NIAID boss left out details that would have been of particular interest to his audience, the students of Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Born in 1940, Anthony Fauci graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1962. In 1966, Fauci earned a medical degree from Cornell University, but he didn’t practice medicine for long. The government was then drafting physicians to treat wounded American soldiers in Vietnam, but the Cornell MD opted for a different path.

In 1968, Dr. Fauci took a cushy “yellow beret” job with the NIH and decided to stay. In 1984, the NIH made Fauci head of NIAID, and, for some medical scientists, that was a problem. Fauci had obtained no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry. Kary Mullis, who had a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and won a Nobel Prize for “his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method,” considered Fauci unqualified for the NIAID job.

“This man thinks you can take a blood sample and stick it in an electron microscope and if it’s got a virus in there, you will know it,” Mullis said. “He doesn’t understand electron microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in.” But he was—and with serious consequences for AIDS patients.

Fauci’s preferred cure was AZT, also known as azidothymidine and Zidovudine. The highly toxic drug failed to prevent or cure AIDS, but Fauci inflicted the drug on foster children in New York City, with disastrous results. He also branded critics “AIDS deniers,” a tactic he would repeat during the pandemic.

Instead of debating critics such as the scientists of the Great Barrington Declaration—most if not all of whom are more qualified than himself—Fauci branded them conspiracy theorists, fringe epidemiologists, and so forth. As with AZT, the COVID vaccines failed to prevent infection or transmission, but Fauci recommended them even for children, the least vulnerable group.

This is what happens when a medical doctor opts for a career as a government bureaucrat and remains in power for decades with no accountability. The Columbia students would do better to ignore Fauci, become practicing physicians and surgeons, and follow the rule of “first do no harm.” More doctors and fewer government bureaucrats should be the rule moving forward.

• This article was also published in The American Spectator

Boko Haram is keen to expand beyond its strongholds in northeast Nigeria, but fighting among its Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (JAS) and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) factions may be hampering the terror group’s plans.

Years of infighting among the Islamic State group (IS) affiliates is driven by JAS grievances over the perceived marginalization of the Buduma ethnic group from ISWAP leadership positions which are typically Kanuri-dominated, according to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

Another point of contention is how the factions handle civilians, particularly concerning “fey’u,” or loot taken outside combat.

ISWAP forbids the taking of fey’u from Muslim civilians, while JAS authorizes seizing the loot, according to the International Crisis Group. JAS also is known to kidnaps girls and women, and its commanders are known to reward loyal fighters by allowing them to enter coerced marriages with abductees, a practice forbidden by ISWAP.

JAS was reeling in 2021 after its leader, Abubakar Shekau, died during an ISWAP attack on his fortress in the Sambisa Forest in Borno State, after which thousands of JAS fighters surrendered to authorities rather than join ISWAP. However, ISWAP did recruit some JAS fighters, seized its territories and expanded its own means of generating revenue.

“This cemented ISWAP’s position in the Islamic State franchise, making it one of the global terror group’s most successful affiliates,” wrote Malik Samuel, a researcher at the ISS Regional Office for West Africa, the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin.

But JAS has staged a furious comeback facilitated by the early 2023 defection of influential ISWAP commander Mikhail Usman, or “Kaila,” a Buduma, to JAS, along with other commanders and fighters.

In October 2023, JAS offensives forced ISWAP fighters to evacuate many of their long-held island territories in the Lake Chad area, the ISS reported. Kaila masterminded the attack, knowing that without its Buduma fighters, who live on the lake, ISWAP would struggle in water-based fighting.

“Those familiar with the clashes say JAS now occupies as much as 40% of the islands previously controlled by ISWAP,” Samuel wrote. “But ISWAP maintains control over the mainland in these areas.”

In April, ISWAP offensives reclaimed Tumbun Allura and Falkima-Hakariya.

According to Samuel, the IS has asked for a pause in attacks because ISWAP cannot afford a protracted, deadly confrontation with JAS, which would risk reputational damage to its major affiliate in West Africa. Its other regional franchise, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, is already being overshadowed by the al-Qaida-linked Jama’at Nusratul Islam Wal Muslimin.

According to the International Crisis Group, ISWAP is currently trying to consolidate its control of areas less threatened by JAS, particularly in central and western Borno State and neighboring Yobe State.

JAS is poised to attack civilians and military targets around Lake Chad and from its other stronghold in the Mandara mountains. The faction also has resumed targeting civilians in Chad’s Région du Lac. It has previously hit Niger’s Diffa region hard, and ICG analysts say it may do so again.

Ongoing military operations across the Lake Chad Basin by the Multinational Joint Task Force and the Nigerian Army are intended to limit the spaces where JAS and ISWAP operate.