Description:

Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr join the Grand Strategy Program to discuss their new book, How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare (Stanford University Press), co-written with Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Ali Vaez. The authors offer a study of Iran, the most sanctioned country in the world, to explore whether economic sanctions work as intended. Comprehensive sanctions are meant to induce uprisings or pressures to change the behavior of the ruling establishment, or to weaken its hold on power. But, after four decades, the case of Iran shows the opposite to be true: sanctions strengthened the Iranian state, impoverished its population, increased state repression, and escalated Iran’s military posture toward the U.S. and its allies in the region.

Narges Bajoghli is an anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins SAIS. Vali Nasr is Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins SAIS. The conversation will be moderated by Arne Westad, Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs.