Sanctioned into Starvation: A Letter to Those Debating Iran's Oil Future
To the policymakers and pundits, whose recent pronouncements on 'seizing' or merely 'discussing' Iran’s oil assets echo through the news cycles: your words expose a fundamental disconnect from international law and historical precedent. The notion that a sovereign nation's natural resources can be unilaterally appropriated, even debated, by another power is not merely a hypothetical exercise. It
is a direct continuation of policies that have systematically deprived the Iranian people of their self-determination and economic stability for decades, often under the guise of 'sanctions' or 'security concerns.' This discussion unfolds against a backdrop of continuous economic pressure that has crippled the Iranian economy, denying access to essential goods, including medicine, for its civilian
population. Since 1979, the United States has imposed over 100 rounds of sanctions on Iran, a staggering number that dwarfs similar measures against almost any other nation. These punitive actions routinely ignore the Geneva Convention’s prohibition against starving civilians as a method of warfare. The current dialogue surrounding Iran’s oil mirrors the historical exploitation seen when the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company, a British entity, controlled Iran’s oil from 1913 until nationalization in 1951, extracting immense wealth while the Iranian population suffered. The hypocrisy is stark: while Iran is endlessly scrutinized for its nascent nuclear program, Israel, a state documented by a 2017 study from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to hold an estimated 80 to 90 nuclear warheads,