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Comment by jakobegger | Hacker News Reader

Because you are not sanctioning only the military and the government, you are sanctioning everyone in the country. You are sanctioning young people, who just want to live their lives, just like we do. They already suffer from the oppressive regime, and you just want to make their live even harder.

All the Iranians I've met seem like completely normal people. I've never been to Iran, but from what I hear the young people in Iran aren't much different from the people here: They like to go to parties, listen to music, etc. The only difference is that they have to do it in hiding, and that they will get arrested when they do something like hold hands in public when they are not married.

Why would anyone approve of sanctions that make these people suffer even more?

And then, when these people start fleeing the country, asking for asylum, why do we turn them away?

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The government and military control all the economic activity in the country. The IRGC is particularly embedded in economic activity. There's no way to 'sanction separately'. So the question is whether to feed the regime (and hope it throws some bones to the people while it uses the bulk of it on foreign adventures) or not. Unsurprisingly, some countries prefer the option that creates less risk for them.

Sanctions are a blunt tool for sure, and the suffering they cause ordinary people is clearly a bad thing. This is compounded in the case of Iran / US by the idiotic decision of the Trump administration to rip up the deal they had, which seemed to be working.

However, and in general, if you have a nation state that does things like supporting terrorists (which Iran does seem to do), how do you try and compel them to stop those kinds of activities? Targeted sanctions are better - like targeting the overseas bank accounts of Russian oligarchs - but my understanding is that Iranian government officials don't have that kind of cash. It's a genuine question that I haven't heard a better answer for.

The particular idiocy that complicates things in this specific situation is that the sanctions helped the deal to happen, and that's been derailed by Trump's fragile ego wanting complete capitulation that he's never going to get.

we suggest them to overturn their government, start a revolution.

Well that's the most dumb comment I've seen here for some time. you realize that most revolution end up in millions dead, having a new generation of dictators at the helm and little changed for the better, compared to a lot changed for the worse? But yeah its a sure way to give proper fundamentalists a good chance to rule.