Unmasking US inhumane policy toward Iran
By Amir Dabiri-Mehr
Political affairs expert
For years, the United States claimed that its sanctions and economic pressure policies targeted only the Islamic Republic’s political system and that Washington had no intention of harming the Iranian people. This claim was never accepted by Iranian public opinion. Yet American officials—both Democrats and Republicans—sought over the years to deceive public opinion, reverse this reality, and justify their anti-human and oppressive sanctions and economic pressures against the Iranian people.
In practice, the unilateral and coercive US sanctions not only covered Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities, defensive equipment, and oil and gas exports, but gradually extended to the domains of medicine and foodstuffs. This expansion intensified the Iranian people’s sense of hostility toward the American government and Washington’s anti-human rights policies. For years, many Iranian elites raised a simple question: If the US government is hostile only to the Islamic Republic, why does it impose restrictions and bans on Iranian youth studying in the United States, and why has obtaining even a tourist visa become nearly impossible for Iranian citizens?
Recent statements by US President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, announcing a new round of economic sanctions against the Iranian people, have stripped away the White House’s anti-popular policy. These remarks reveal that, in the minds of American officials, no distinction exists between the Iranian people and the Iranian government. When they speak of Iran’s economic collapse, they do not mean merely weakening the political system; they oppose a powerful, independent, and developing Iran. For years they have tried to conceal this bitter reality behind verbal rhetoric and false propaganda.
They know better than any other country that the new sanctions targeting digital financial transactions, shipping, aviation, gold trade, and technologies will inflict the greatest damage and hardship on ordinary people and place their livelihoods under severe pressure and constraint. Yet the miscalculation of American officials lies precisely here: they imagine that livelihood pressure on the people can stir public opinion against the Islamic Republic and provoke unrest. They further believe that serious sanctions can bring about the collapse of Iran’s economy.
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