Addressing the UN last month, an unrepentant Maduro condemned US “imperialist ideas”. More than 10 years of US sanctions on the government, central bank, state oil company and individuals have made matters worse while failing in their main aim – to install a leader acceptable to Washington. For Trump and his emulators, bashing weaker countries is fun. This impoverished country is now in its sixth year of economic crisis caused by mismanagement, corruption, hyper-inflation, rights abuses, and the flight of nearly five million people. Notorious, too, in this context is the west’s isolation of Venezuela, whose 1999 Bolivarian revolution, now controversially led by Nicolás Maduro, was regarded from the first as an insufferable challenge to US influence in Latin America. “Under Trump, being Iranian is crime enough.” “The broad application of sanctions amounts to collective punishment for tens of millions of Iranians,” the New York Times commented. One estimate suggests Covid-19 deaths in the Middle East’s hardest-hit country could total 300,000 by the end of 2021. But they are among those most hurt by sanctions – and the virus. US measures also indirectly imperil imports of food and vital medical supplies.Ĭhildren and old people, farmers and bazaaris do not have any say over Iran’s nuclear policy. They are victims of additional American sanctions this month against 18 Iranian banks that mostly deal in domestic credit. But they are victims, too, of Washington’s blocking of a $5bn IMF loan to help Iran fight coronavirus. The way the Trump administration tells it, Iranians are victims of their terrorist regime. The awful suffering of Iran’s people is another case in point. Leaders and governments bent, for whatever reason, on tormenting others into submission risk creating a bottomless torment for themselves.
As Colin Powell, a former US secretary of state, liked to say, politicians should be careful what they wish for – lest it come true. The Korean conundrum reflects the perils – strategic, political and moral – implicit in the merciless, usually US-orchestrated pummelling and ostracism of so-called “rogue states” in the age of Covid.
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