BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

US SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC AND BEYOND

Author: Abu Salah Md. Yousuf

DOI Link: https://www.dio.org/10.56888/BIISSj2012v33n2a3

ABSTRACT

The Iranian nuclear crisis is one of the major issues debated in international politics. The USA and its allies think that a nuclear Iran would be catastrophic for regional and global security. They fear that the nuclear Iran would threaten their interests in the region. The Iranian government denies any kind of its ambition for nuclear weapons. At the same time, the country is not eager to give up its plan for enrich in guranium in its nuclear plants. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not yet confirm that Iran bears a plan for nuclearisation, but the organisation finds anomalies in the Iranian nuclear plants. The USA and its allies emphasise that the way Iran is progressing, it has all the potentials for producing nuclear weapons. Hence, they have imposed sanctions against Iran to weaken the country economically as well as politically. The USA says that the objective of sanctions is to prevent Iran from nuclearisation. But, Iran considers it as a conspiracy against the Iranian government and the state. Against this backdrop, the paper attempts to understand the underlying objectives of sanctions by the USA and the West against Iran, and to evaluate the effectiveness and the implications of those sanctions. The paper discusses theoretical debates in International Relations about the success of sanctions. It evaluates the domestic, regional and global implications of sanctions relating to Iran. At the end, the paper tries to depict the future directions of Iranian nuclear crisis and the challenges for the West to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue.