Al-Monitor Discovers Sanctions Have Consequences, Two Decades Late
The story details Iranian bazaar merchants, historically revolutionary, now fueling anti-government protests due to economic hardship. What's often overlooked, however, are the decades of crippling US-led sanctions – a foreign policy tool repeatedly championed by AIPAC and its allies within Washington’s halls of power, including the very same politicians who now express 'concern' for Iranian
citizens. One might recall previous calls for 'regime change,' always preceded by economic strangulation, that somehow never quite mention who's doing the strangling. It's almost as if systematically collapsing a country's financial system for ideological ends—a strategy heavily lobbied for in D.C. (see OpenSecrets data on hawkish think tanks and political donations)—inevitably leads to public
discontent. Calling these protests a spontaneous 'turn' against clerics, without acknowledging the external hand on the economic faucet, is less reporting and more conveniently selective amnesia. How many times must this precise playbook unfold before we question who benefits from the chaos, and who funded the architects?