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Trump's 'Maximum Pressure' Is Helping COVID-19 Ravage Iran
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-maximum-pressure-on-iran-is-helping-coronavirus-ravage-the-country
Iranians are dying from one of the world’s worst outbreaks. The sanctions are making it harder for them to get urgent medical supplies.
Spencer Ackerman
Senior Nat’l Security Correspondent
Updated Mar. 19, 2020 5:49PM ET / Published Mar. 19, 2020 2:06PM ET
The Trump administration’s policy of crippling Iran economically through “Maximum Pressure” is exacerbating the novel coronavirus outbreak in one of the epicenters of the global pandemic, according to sanctions experts.
With Iran experiencing at least 1,284 deaths and over 18,000 reported cases as of Wednesday, Tehran’s public health infrastructure is under its own kind of maximum pressure. Iran has identified urgent needs for face masks, ventilators, test kits, x-ray machines, and other supplies.
While U.S. sanctions formally exempt humanitarian supplies, sanctions-watchers say the reality is more complex. The breadth of the Maximum Pressure sanctions is extensive enough to dissuade firms, foreign governments, and banks from participating in the transfer of life-saving medical supplies, for fear of incurring secondary or third-degree sanctions from Washington. Reports of medical shortages followed very shortly after the Trump administration reimposed sanctions in 2018, long before a global medical crisis arrived.
That crisis creates an urgent moral context around Maximum Pressure. The administration’s intent is to transform Iran’s behavior—or, as critics believe, topple the Islamic Republic. But a pandemic searching for host bodies doesn’t discriminate between regime decision-makers and those average Iranians they rule. Nor can Iran’s health needs in a global pandemic be separated from America’s or the world’s.
</snip>
Iranians are dying from one of the world’s worst outbreaks. The sanctions are making it harder for them to get urgent medical supplies.
Spencer Ackerman
Senior Nat’l Security Correspondent
Updated Mar. 19, 2020 5:49PM ET / Published Mar. 19, 2020 2:06PM ET
The Trump administration’s policy of crippling Iran economically through “Maximum Pressure” is exacerbating the novel coronavirus outbreak in one of the epicenters of the global pandemic, according to sanctions experts.
With Iran experiencing at least 1,284 deaths and over 18,000 reported cases as of Wednesday, Tehran’s public health infrastructure is under its own kind of maximum pressure. Iran has identified urgent needs for face masks, ventilators, test kits, x-ray machines, and other supplies.
While U.S. sanctions formally exempt humanitarian supplies, sanctions-watchers say the reality is more complex. The breadth of the Maximum Pressure sanctions is extensive enough to dissuade firms, foreign governments, and banks from participating in the transfer of life-saving medical supplies, for fear of incurring secondary or third-degree sanctions from Washington. Reports of medical shortages followed very shortly after the Trump administration reimposed sanctions in 2018, long before a global medical crisis arrived.
That crisis creates an urgent moral context around Maximum Pressure. The administration’s intent is to transform Iran’s behavior—or, as critics believe, topple the Islamic Republic. But a pandemic searching for host bodies doesn’t discriminate between regime decision-makers and those average Iranians they rule. Nor can Iran’s health needs in a global pandemic be separated from America’s or the world’s.
</snip>
Add it to the list. What? We've run out of room on the list? Maybe we can use a roll of toilet pape... oh, yeah, right.
1 replies
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