TheEconomistNovember 28th 2020 391P
erhaps he should have done a bit
more shopping on his last trip to New
York. Last autumn Gebran Bassil, the head
of a Christian party in Lebanon, was his
country’s foreign minister and aspired to
be its next president. On a trip to America
in September he visited West Point, a mili-
tary college, where he decried the corrup-
tion that has bankrupted Lebanon. Mr Bas-
sil may be unable to return—because
America has blacklisted him for his own al-
leged corruption.
The sanctions announced on Novem-
ber 6th against Mr Bassil were Donald
Trump’s highest-profile move against a
Lebanese politician. Yet it is not clear what
his administration hoped it would achieve,
beyond complicating efforts to form a new
Lebanese government in the aftermath of
the huge explosion at Beirut’s port in Au-
gust. Officials have offered contradictory
rationales for the move, which illustrates
the incoherence in America’s sanctions-heavy foreign policy.
In Mr Trump’s first three years the Trea-
sury Department added an average of 1,070
names a year to its main sanctions list (see
chart on next page), compared with 533 un-
der Barack Obama and 435 under George
Bush. More than 20% of the 8,600 entries
on the list are linked to Iran and the four
Arab countries where it wields the most in-
fluence: Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
“Maximum pressure”, as Mr Trump calls
it, has been a tactical success. In April Iran’s
oil exports dipped as low as 70,000 barrels
per day, compared with 2.5m two years be-fore. (Exact numbers are elusive because
much of Iran’s oil trade is now done in se-
cret.) The rial, Iran’s currency, has lost 85%
of its value. Yet economic pain has not
brought political change. Sanctions have
not compelled Iran to halt its support for
militias nor convinced Bashar al-Assad, the
Syrian dictator, to stop bombing his peo-
ple. Sanctions may be an alluring tool for
presidents. They are inexpensive, blood-
less and largely up to executive discretion.
But they often do not work.
Sanctions can be effective when they
have broad international support, achiev-
able demands and are targeted at firms and
people that need to trade and travel. A
multilateral embargo on Iran led to the deal
in 2015 that restricted its nuclear pro-
gramme. Sanctions on Rusal, a Russian
aluminium giant, forced a Kremlin-backed
oligarch to surrender control of the firm.
Mr Trump’s maximum-pressure cam-
paign, however, fulfils none of these crite-
ria. For a start, many of his sanctions are
unilateral, and some have begun to fray.
Iran’s oil exports have climbed from their
nadir in April, perhaps to as high as 1m bar-
rels a day this autumn, as some countries
(particularly China) have defied American
threats and snapped up discounted crude.
In its final weeks the administration is
debating whether to label the Houthis, an
Iranian-backed Shia militia in Yemen, as aAmerican policy in the Middle EastYou’re sanctioned!
BEIRUT
The Trump administration has little to show for four years of economic
warfare against Iran and its alliesMiddle East & Africa
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