![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/P121009PS-0202.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: “No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they can not be regarded as jointly and severally responsible.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Guardian<\/em> reports<\/a> that “Hundreds of thousands of Iranians with serious illnesses have been put at imminent risk by the unintended consequences of international sanctions, which have led to dire shortages of life-saving medicines such as chemotherapy drugs for cancer and bloodclotting agents for haemophiliacs.”<\/p>\n
The key word there is “unintended.” The problem with describing it this way is that it isn’t accurate. Washington understands the consequences of the sanctions, and the same Guardian<\/em> report acknowledges that the Obama administration has been made aware that hundreds of thousands of sick people in Iran have had their access to medicine restricted because of the sanctions. And they haven’t done anything about it.<\/p>\n
“The west lies when it says it hasn’t imposed sanctions on our medical sector. Many medical firms have sanctioned us,”\u00a0Naser Naghdi, the director general of Iran’s biggest pharmaceutical company, told the Guardian.<\/p>\n
But sanctions aren’t just blocking much needed medical supplies; unemployment is rising and inflation is spiraling out of control. \u201cPrices of fruit and sugar, among other staples, have soared \u2013 in some cases showing threefold and fourfold increases,\u201d Saeed Kamali Dehghan wrote\u00a0in the Guardian<\/a>\u00a0last summer. \u201cThe price of meat, an essential ingredient of Iranian food, has gone up to such an extent that many now eat it only on special occasions.\u201d<\/p>\n
“What is most concerning,” according to<\/a> Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, “is that it is now increasingly clear that the people are the target.” Parsi added that “in a non-democracy, such as Iran, the ability for people to pressure their government is limited,” and that “Many in Washington acknowledge that we are conducting economic warfare. That means the entire Iranian economy is the battlefield \u2013 and ordinary Iranians are [seen as] enemy combatants.”<\/p>\n
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0sanctions aren\u2019t demonstrably changing the policies of the regime, but has insisted on their continuance nevertheless. As one of the\u00a0top congressional supporters of sanctions,\u00a0Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), said<\/a>, \u201cCritics [of the sanctions] argued that\u00a0these\u00a0measures will hurt the Iranian people. \u00a0Quite frankly, we need to do just\u00a0that.\u201d Or take\u00a0Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY)<\/a>: \u201cThe goal \u2026 is to inflict crippling, unendurable economic pain over there. Iran\u2019s banking sector \u2014 especially its central bank \u2014 needs to become the financial equivalent of Chernobyl: radioactive, dangerous and most of all, empty.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the major atrocities of all of post-WWII US foreign policy was the American-led\u00a0sanctions on Iraq<\/a>, which ended up killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. We heard the same odious rationales for the sanctions on Iraq as we are now hearing for the sanctions on Iran.\u00a0Denis Halliday,\u00a0UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad,\u00a0insisted<\/a>\u00a0the effect of the Iraq sanctions \u201cfit the definition of genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n