How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare By NargesBajoghli, ValiNasr, DjavadSalehi‐Isfahani, and AliVaez. Stanford University Press, 2024. 212 pages. $24, paper.

This team of scholars from multiple disciplines offers a searing indictment of contemporary sanctions policy, focusing on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Through empirical rigor and critical analysis, the book examines the received understandings of this tool of statecraft, exposing both the limits of its efficacy and the many unintended consequences. The study offers one of the most incisive accounts of economic coercion available in the literature. The volume grounds its arguments in a diverse and robust methodology. Analyzing oral histories, discourses, and economic data, the authors present a rare inside-out perspective on how sanctions are experienced by ordinary Iranians. The research includes long-form interviews with 80 of the republic's citizens, ranging from social workers and political activists to members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who have become entrepreneurs. This ethnographic richness makes the book's analysis deeply visceral, moving beyond macroeconomic abstractions. The approach illuminates how these punishments function as “invisible” warfare, producing a permanent state of siege that penetrates the fabric of everyday life. What emerges is a portrait of sanctions as a deeply flawed instrument, a supposedly nonlethal weapon that nonetheless inflicts extensive civilian suffering while failing to achieve policy objectives. The central thesis is not simply that the measures have been ineffective in moderating Iranian state behavior but that they have actively undermined the very forces—social, political, and economic—that might have produced constructive change. “The combination of sanctions” and other crises, the authors observe, create “disaster swarms” that compound vulnerabilities, destroy livelihoods, intensify political repression, and strengthen anti-Western hardliners. This claim is vividly illustrated through individual accounts. We hear from Fariba, a retired schoolteacher struggling to afford basic necessities, and Nazanin, a caterer whose professional and psychological stability has been eroded by economic volatility. The cumulative impact of these narratives paints a picture of a society where sanctions are not merely inconvenient but an existential threat, fracturing the public sphere, eroding trust, and preventing meaningful political engagement. One of the most disturbing findings in the book is the extent to which economic warfare has contributed to widespread cynicism. So rather than sparking dissent or encouraging movements for regime change, this has led many to retreat into private life, hollowing out the civic space that might otherwise support reform. The book also makes a compelling case that sanctions are not “targeted” but construct and broadly define an enemy. By design and implementation, they do not merely strike at the heart of government but consider the entire population as hostile. They criminalize interaction, stigmatize identity, and render Iran a global pariah. This has profound implications not only for the state but also for its citizens, students, researchers, and even the diaspora. The enemy status has a “stubborn, sticky quality” with no clear “off-ramp,” the authors argue. It makes reintegration into the international community structurally and psychologically difficult. Perhaps the most consequential insight of the book is its explanation of how sanctions have restructured the Islamic Republic's domestic political economy. Rather than weakening the state, the policy has enriched the most repressive and ideologically rigid elements within it. Enterprises linked to the Revolutionary Guards have profited handsomely from black-market opportunities, evasion schemes, and state contracts. By contrast, independent business owners and internationally oriented professionals, who often have relatively moderate political views, have been systematically disadvantaged. The distorted incentives have therefore worked directly against the professed goals of liberalization and diplomatic engagement. The authors also challenge the widely held assumption that the threat of sanctions compels states to negotiate or compromise. Though the 2015 Iran nuclear deal might appear to confirm this, the authors assert that success hinged on a credible US willingness to lift the punishments rather than simply impose them. That was severely undermined by the Trump administration's unilateral withdrawal from the deal in 2018, reinforcing Iranian fears that engagement with the West is a trap and not a pathway to normalization. This distrust of the United States, combined with Washington's subsequent “maximum pressure” campaign, led Tehran to double down on its nuclear program and reorient strategically toward China and Russia. The leadership no longer believed any promises that sanctions would be lifted in exchange for a deal with the West. The macroeconomic analysis presented in the book is equally persuasive. The authors detail the collapse in GDP growth, the decline in household consumption, and the contraction of the middle class that have followed successive waves of sanctions since 2011. Yet they also note the paradoxical resilience of the Iranian economy, especially its non-oil sectors. This is attributable in part to the country's relatively open market mechanisms. This duality is significant: It demonstrates that while economic warfare imposes profound hardship, it does not automatically produce systemic collapse. The Islamic Republic has neither imploded nor capitulated. Instead, it has adapted, often in ways that frustrate the very aims of US foreign policy. The authors thus warn that the overuse of sanctions may be strategically self-defeating. By normalizing the practice, the United States risks diluting its coercive power and encouraging adversaries to develop long-term strategies of resistance and circumvention. Such a reaction is evident in Tehran's growing trade and military ties with China and Russia. The study contends that as more states experience these penalties, the incentives to de-dollarize and construct alternative financial systems grow stronger. This could ultimately threaten the very foundations of US global influence. One of the volume's most provocative claims is its ethical argument: that sanctions, particularly in their most comprehensive form, violate the boundaries that distinguish combatants from civilians. “This approach is not morally superior to the targeting of civilians in warfare,” the authors write, arguing that the humanitarian suffering—shortages of medicine, food insecurity, crumbling infrastructure—is not a collateral consequence but an intended feature. To challenge assertions that this suffering is merely “unintended,” the book exposes how early architects of sanctions explicitly aimed to instill fear in civilian populations. This critique is sharpened by evidence of absence: There are no established international norms governing the use of these tools. Despite widespread acknowledgment of the devastating effects, no Geneva Convention exists regarding such policies. As a result, they persist in a legal and ethical gray zone, shielded by the fiction that they are a humane alternative to kinetic conflict. The authors reject this. In their view, sanctions constitute a form of warfare in all but name, one that demands the same degree of scrutiny and regulation. While the authors present a compelling case, there are critics who will contest the arguments. Some might contend that the negative consequences they document—mass suffering, political repression, and international isolation—may be foreseeable but they are unavoidable outcomes of exerting meaningful pressure on a state like Iran. In this view, civilian hardship is the regrettable but necessary cost of influencing a regime with a track record of regional destabilization, human rights abuses, and nuclear brinkmanship. These advocates may hold that harsh economic measures serve a broader geopolitical and normative function: signaling international disapproval and attempting to prevent more catastrophic outcomes, such as war or nuclear proliferation. Moreover, the book tends to downplay the degree to which the regime itself bears responsibility for the suffering of its population. Critics could argue that sanctions are only part of the equation and that much of the human toll arises from domestic mismanagement, endemic corruption, and entrenched authoritarianism. Attributing the collapse of civic space and economic vitality solely or even primarily to sanctions risks absolving the Iranian leadership of accountability for its own policy failures. From this perspective, sanctions may exacerbate existing structural weaknesses, but they do not create them. While the authors acknowledge these counterarguments to some extent, their analytical weight falls decisively on the critique of Western policy, leaving less room for a systematic exploration of the interplay between external pressure and internal governance dysfunction. A more balanced account might have allowed greater consideration of the state's agency. It is not merely a victim of sanctions but a contributor to its own political and economic pathologies. How Sanctions Work is an urgent intervention into contemporary debates on economic statecraft. Its greatest strength lies in synthesizing micro-level human experience with macro-level political analysis. The book is unrelenting in its critique but measured in tone, eschewing polemics in favor of empirical evidence and analytical precision. It does not suggest that all sanctions are inherently illegitimate, but it does compel a rethinking of their strategic utility, moral justification, and long-term consequences. For scholars of international relations, political economy, and Middle East studies, this book is indispensable. It raises profound questions about the ethics and effectiveness of one of the most commonly used instruments in modern foreign policy. More important, it reminds us that behind every economic indicator lies a constellation of human lives—lives often sacrificed at the altar of strategic abstraction.