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01:37Transcription by ESO. Translation by —
01:41Welcome back to China Now.
01:43In the second segment, Thinkers Forum welcomes Mariam Yamshiri,
01:48Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School,
01:52to analyze the United States sanctions regime and its impact on a global scale.
01:57Let's have a look.
02:05Hello, everyone.
02:06Welcome to Thinkers Forum.
02:07My name is Yun Peng.
02:08So, chances are, if you're watching this show, you probably also watch, read, listen to, or scroll.
02:16No judgment there.
02:17A lot of news.
02:18And in any news cycle, the word sanctions come up a lot.
02:24And when we hear sanctions, they give us —
02:26it gives us the familiar feeling of, like, inflation, national budget, trade balances.
02:32It's something that we think we know.
02:34It's state-to-state action, usually economic pressuring.
02:37It's sometimes under the disguise of national security, trade policy, or human rights.
02:44But ultimately, it's a form of economic coercion by the state against another state.
02:49But today, my guest says that that picture is, at best, incomplete and, worse, downright misleading.
02:57She argues that sanctions regime, especially in the U.S., is formulated by, informed by,
03:04and relied upon private actors, banks, corporations, plaintiffs, lawyers,
03:11that ultimately serves part of a broader national security ecosystem.
03:17And my guest, of course, is Professor Maryam Jamshidi of the University of Collateral Law School.
03:24And today, she's going to talk about how we should view the U.S. sanctions regime.
03:29Professor Jamshidi, welcome to the show.
03:31It's great to be here.
03:31Thanks so much for inviting me.
03:33So, let's jump straight in.
03:34When we think about sanctions and sanctions policies purely as a state-to-state policy,
03:42what exactly are we missing in that picture?
03:44Well, when we think about sanctions as sort of being something that is primarily deployed by states,
03:52we end up missing the role that private actors play in shaping, advocating for, and even enforcing sanctions.
04:03So, the United States has what is probably the most robust and expansive regime of economic sanctions the world has
04:12ever seen.
04:13And in order to actually implement those sanctions, in particular, you need private actors.
04:19The United States has increasingly, for example, relied on financial sanctions, which basically means using the financial, global financial system,
04:30in order to economically coerce states as well as private parties.
04:38And in order to actually effectively implement its financial sanctions regime, the United States, and this is, again, just one
04:45example of the way in which private actors play an important role.
04:49Private actors also lobby for sanctions, much like they lobby for many other kinds of policies in the United States.
04:56They also lobby for economic sanctions to be placed.
05:00Sometimes that lobbying is done by, let's say, NGOs that want to see human rights-based sanctions placed on certain
05:08actors abroad, even on states.
05:11You could also have private industry that lobbies for sanctions because they benefit from having the goods or products of
05:24another country restrained.
05:25So, again, so many different ways in which private actors play a really key role in sanctions, benefit from sanctions,
05:33enforce sanctions, and things of that nature.
05:36And a state-to-state conception of what sanctions are really does obscure all of that.
05:41I think when a lot of people think about this process mechanically, their eyes are thinking this sanctions policy is
05:48a top-down, settled thing by the national bureaucracy,
05:52or they think this is what you talked about in the latter part of what you just said, lobbying process.
05:58Interest groups asking the government to do their bidding.
06:02And based on my understanding of your scholarship, you seem to suggest there's something in between,
06:07that we should really see the formation of sanctions policy more as a process that involves national security professionals,
06:13but also the interest groups who are mostly consisted of private sector actors.
06:19Tell us about how this process works mechanically.
06:23How do those private actors influence national policy?
06:25I mean, you know, they influence it in a lot of different ways.
06:28So, I mean, you can have, you know, grassroots efforts to influence U.S. sanctions policy.
06:36So, for example, boycotts are a very common way in which private actors participate in informal kinds of economic coercion.
06:46And those boycotts have been used in the past to actually induce or convince the state to implement its own
06:57set of sanctions.
06:58So, for example, in the case of South Africa, when South Africa was ruled by an apartheid government,
07:04a grassroots boycott movement played an important role in eventually prompting states themselves to implement sanctions against the South African
07:15government.
07:16You could also have, as I mentioned, like more formal lobbying efforts where you have private actors working more directly
07:26with members of Congress or members of various, you know, executive branch institutions,
07:31again, focusing on the United States to, you know, promote certain kinds of sanctions regimes.
07:36You know, thinking a little bit about, for example, the sanctions that were implemented against Francesca Albanese, who is the
07:47special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
07:51So, she's an independent expert with the United Nations.
07:55Reporting suggests that private corporations who she named in a report last year may have lobbied the Trump administration to
08:04impose sanctions on her in response to that report.
08:09Right.
08:09You can also have, you know, as I've written about in my scholarship, you can also have private plaintiffs.
08:16So, you know, private individuals or groups who are in court suing other private parties or foreign states in various
08:25kinds of litigation.
08:27Many of it, much of this revolves around terrorism-related litigation.
08:30You can also have them actually using the litigation system, the court system, to actually influence and shape sanctions policy
08:43in certain ways as well.
08:45Again, through the courts, they can have this impact too.
08:48How do private actors use the judicial system to impact on sanctions regimes?
08:54So, you know, they can use the judicial system to enforce sanctions.
08:57So, they can take existing sanctions regimes and, as private actors, use the judicial system to enforce those sanctions regimes
09:06against certain parties.
09:08There are particular U.S. laws that actually empower certain private parties in certain kinds of cases to attach the
09:17sanctioned assets of defendants.
09:20So, that's both an enforcement mechanism as well as through the litigation process, through the presentation of different kinds of
09:28arguments.
09:30These kinds of plaintiffs can actually use the courts to weigh in on the interpretation of U.S. sanctions regimes,
09:39right?
09:40So, they can push the courts in certain directions and have those courts then issue opinions that provide a particular
09:48legal interpretation on U.S. sanctions.
09:50So, they can influence them in that sense as well.
09:54So, private parties have also used pending litigation to then go to Congress or to go to the executive branch
10:02and lobby for new sanctions regimes to allow them to attach assets that they're seeking through litigation.
10:09So, when we are talking about sanctions, usually people who are pro-sanctions usually bring up the example of South
10:17Africa saying that sanctions can be a weapon used for good and, in that case, it was against the apartheid
10:24regime and the result, many humanitarians would say, is a good result.
10:29But, nowadays, we know the sanctions is much more complicated.
10:33A lot of times, sanctions are very costly both monetarily but also humanly.
10:38There was the famous saying by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that a million children's death in Iraq was
10:45a price worth paying as a result of sanctions for the political ends.
10:49So, with that background in mind, what should we view these private lobbying efforts by private actors in the U
10:59.S. to use the U.S. state for their own economic benefits?
11:03I'm specifically thinking about your article on Francesca Albanese that you just mentioned because Albanese wasn't sanctioned because there was
11:12some direct national security threat to the U.S. state or U.S. persons.
11:16It was more of her report, like you said, mentioning specific U.S. corporations.
11:21And, at least when the sanctioned results came out, my first reaction was this was a lobbying effort by those
11:28very corporations asking the U.S. government to sanction someone who harmed their economic interest.
11:33So, if that's a prevalent phenomenon in the U.S., how should we see those sanctions policies?
11:38Are they national security policies or are they, like, state capitalistic actions on behalf of U.S. corporations?
11:46You know, it's hard to draw, I think, broad conclusions from, you know, some of these more discreet examples, at
11:55least with respect to the Albanese sanctions.
11:57You know, it does seem that U.S. corporations targeted by her report played an important role in the Trump
12:07administration's decision to target her.
12:09But even if they hadn't, you know, like, it was quite clear that Albanese was, she was highlighting the role
12:16of major U.S. corporations in very serious international crime.
12:21And the allegations that she presented against them are obviously very serious.
12:26They involve, you know, complicity and things like genocide, you know.
12:30So, you know, while the Trump administration probably could have sanctioned her before this.
12:38So, the sanctions she was subjected to relate to basically cooperating or supporting the work of the International Criminal Court,
12:47you know, which as a U.N. special rapporteur, you know, she does certainly indirectly.
12:54You know, this didn't, these sanctions didn't come until this specific report was released in the summer.
13:02And the statements by the U.S. administration made quite clear that they saw her report as an attack on
13:11the U.S. economy, on important corporate actors.
13:15But again, you know, I would say it's hard to, you know, extrapolate from at least that example to broader
13:24conclusions about how U.S. economic sanctions operate.
13:27That being said, I do think that there are, if we take that example alongside other data points, we can
13:37start to sort of see a pattern.
13:39And I actually think the most telling of all examples is the way in which U.S. sanctions law, so
13:48the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, known as IEPA, is the primary, the central U.S. law used to establish
13:59sanctions.
14:00IEPA was used by the Trump administration shortly after it came back into power last year to institute sweeping tariffs
14:11against almost every single country on the planet.
14:16And those tariffs, which are, you know, very clear mechanisms for generating financial, for generating money for the United States,
14:27right, tariffs or taxes, but also are very clear economic policies,
14:32demonstrate the degree to which sanctions and tariffs are used by the United States as ways not just of economic
14:44coercion, but also of revenue generation, you know?
14:48So the – and over the course of the last year and into this year, the United States has made
14:58clear that it sees tariffs as a form of economic coercion.
15:01When we think about economic coercion, by and large, there has been a stark line drawn such that sanctions qualify
15:11as economic coercion, but tariffs are seen as sort of regular economic policy, right?
15:17The two things have traditionally been kept very separate from one another.
15:21What the Trump administration has done is it has collapsed these two things into one another, used sanctions-related authorities
15:30to generate revenue through tariffs and used tariffs as a way of subjecting countries to economic coercion,
15:42using tariffs, using tariffs to get countries to do policy-oriented things the United States wants.
15:48So, for example, it used IEPA-based tariffs to prohibit other countries, like Mexico, from providing energy, oil resources to
16:00Cuba once the United States started to tighten the screws on Cuba.
16:04It used IEPA-based tariffs to try and force India away from buying Russian oil.
16:13I'm not going to deny that they have an important – from the U.S. perspective, we may not agree
16:20with it.
16:20I certainly don't – national security element to them, that they are, you know, primarily, let's say, conceived of as
16:26a national security tool.
16:28But they have evolved very much since they really started to be used quite aggressively, particularly after the Cold War.
16:37And I think we're at a point where it's become increasingly clear that these aren't – this isn't just about
16:45national security or human rights or, you know, politics, right?
16:49That these policies also have really important economic purposes to them.
16:56Certainly, we know that.
16:57We know they're meant to punish states from an economic standpoint.
17:01But that there are economic benefits as well for the sanctioning state.
17:05For a very long time, a lot of people, for example, like free market liberals, would look at sanctions and
17:12say, actually, sanctions are really bad for free market capitalism because they prevent countries and prevent businesses within sanctioning countries,
17:22like U.S. businesses, from being able to actually have economic relationships with other countries.
17:27That's bad for capitalism.
17:29That has been an argument, right?
17:31But I think the argument that's now also, I think, increasingly one that we need to be paying attention to
17:37is the ways in which these sanctions also benefit certain capitalist interests.
17:41You know, in the 90s, certain members of Congress from oil-producing states were very much in favor and pushed
17:51for sanctions on Iraq's oil because the view was that doing so would benefit U.S. oil producers.
18:00Again, some of the other data points I mentioned beyond IEPA or some of the ones I have in mind
18:06are ones like that.
18:07You know, like, so there are places we can look at throughout history where we see the U.S. using
18:14sanctions in ways that certainly benefit corporate actors.
18:17But this, like, Trump, the second Trump administration's use of these authorities to institute tariffs is, I think, kind of
18:26a culmination of a longer set of practices that have been more obscured.
18:30So what you were saying is traditionally sanctions policies are usually overtly political, whereas trade policies such as tariffs are
18:40something that's more at least officially benign-looking.
18:44But now there's a fusion of the two.
18:46But now there's a fusion of the two.
18:48You know, there's been a fusion of the two where tariffs are used to coerce for political coercion and where,
18:54at least for a time, sanctions policy was used very explicitly as economic policy.
19:00And as revenue generation for the U.S. government.
19:04Why do you think U.S. sanctions has become more of a thing in the post-Cold War era?
19:09Because I'm thinking, is it because generally the U.S. feel less constrained in its unilateral actions, not just with
19:15regarding the sanctions, but also military actions?
19:18Or do you think there's a development either in U.S. law or U.S. business practices which enabled those
19:24sanctioning working in a way that it couldn't work during the Cold War and previous eras?
19:30I mean, you know, I think that the biggest reason why sanctions end up becoming more liberally used after the
19:37Cold War is, as I said, the end of effectively the Soviet Union,
19:45the dissolution of sort of the separation between a U.S.-led world order and a Soviet-led world order such
19:55that the United States is basically left as the global hegemon in a global economy that is increasingly dominated by
20:05free market terms.
20:06And where the U.S. dollar, right, becomes – and it was – you know, the U.S. dollar was
20:13already, you know, effectively the dominant currency after the Cold War.
20:19Certainly, you know, after the British pound, British sterling starts to come unraveled as a global currency in the 1970s
20:26and 80s.
20:27The U.S. dollar becomes more and more important.
20:29You know, by the time the Cold War happens, it's the dollar, right?
20:33Well, by the time the end of the Cold War happens, it's the dollar, right, that is really, really important.
20:37And also you have, over the course of the 70s and 80s, also the expansion of the U.S. financial
20:44industry, right?
20:45So the U.S. financial industry becomes unrestrained, far fewer – you know, the amount of regulatory restrictions on the
20:52U.S. financial industry domestically loosens substantially.
20:55It becomes a much more important node in the U.S. economy as well as the global economy.
21:02So you have the strengthening of the U.S. dollar.
21:05You have the dominance of the U.S. financial industry.
21:09You have the end of the Soviet Union, the end of communism.
21:12You have the WTO, right, that, like, creates this integrated global economy.
21:18You know, and then you have the United States wanting to exercise and flex its power, not just in military
21:24terms.
21:25That's expensive.
21:27And also, you know, you also have the post-Vietnam era where Americans are, you know, much less inclined to
21:34allow their children to be deployed to all sorts of parts of the globe.
21:40For the sake of U.S. interests.
21:43So you don't – this also puts U.S. troops in less of harm's way.
21:47Right.
21:48Less politically costly for the politicians.
21:50It's less politically costly.
21:51And economic sanctions, you know, again, of course, as I mentioned, you know, there are those who argue that economic
21:57sanctions have costs for the sanctioning states.
21:59But, you know, this is relatively cost-free as well.
22:02So you have all of these things that kind of join together in this perfect storm where the United States,
22:08you know, looks at this tool that it's had in its arsenal and it's used in its arsenal for the
22:15preceding decades following the end of World War II.
22:18But now it becomes an even more attractive tool to use to basically deploy U.S. power in ways that
22:27are relatively effective and that don't cost the United States very much.
22:34So do you think this is more of an after-capturing-the-state problem?
22:37Or do you think it's a structural issue that a U.S. state is the representative of the corporations?
22:43Well, I mean, I don't think it's as easy as saying it's one or the other.
22:48I think it, you know, depends upon the particular issues involved, the interest the United States has, the corporations involved,
22:57the degree to which the corporate interests align with those objectives.
23:01I don't think it's simply that the United States is always captured by corporations or that, you know, the United
23:08States is always, you know, effectively the way that the U.S. is structured always means that it's furthering corporate
23:16interests.
23:16Because, again, corporations have different interests.
23:19You know, we're going to talk about capitalist interests.
23:21That's a little bit different, right?
23:22Like the United States, I think, does, you know, by and large operate in a way that promotes the interests
23:30of capitalism, fundamentally meaning the interests of profit over the interests of its people.
23:38But whether or not it's always aligned with, you know, U.S. corporate culture, U.S. corporate interests writ large,
23:45I don't even know how you define what that is.
23:48You know, when it comes to tariffs, for example, again, a tool of political coercion as well as economic interests,
23:56you know, you have some corporations that were important corporations, right?
24:01Like Apple, for example, who were not happy about the tariffs.
24:07You had other corporations like U.S. steel manufacturers that, you know, by and large are happy with the tariffs.
24:14So, you know, it's like I said, and that's just one example of the ways in which it's not easy
24:19to tell a very neat or black and white story about all of this.
24:23I think what is important to understand, and, you know, I work on sanctions as part of my broader work
24:29on national security, is that this particular area of U.S. law and U.S. policy, national security,
24:38is by and large treated, I think, in such a way where most people who analyze U.S. national security
24:47policy, U.S. national security law, discuss it, you know, criticize it even,
24:53don't think about the role of private actors beyond the sort of narrow understanding of the role of private contractors,
25:01right?
25:01People, sorry, organizations that get, companies that get paid, right, to basically do the U.S.'s bidding.
25:08What I think is important to understand about sanctions and U.S. national security more broadly is that, much like
25:12other areas of U.S. policy and U.S. law,
25:16private actors have an important role to play here as well.
25:19And so when it comes to sanctions policy, you know, like, for example, you have a bunch of private actors,
25:25you know,
25:26I don't know if you've seen this documentary, it's called The Pistachio Wars,
25:29but it talks about the role of two very important American business people who are married.
25:40Stuart, I think is the husband's name, Stuart and Linda Resnick,
25:44and they are the owners of a company called The Wonderful Company,
25:47which owns, you know, one of their products is pistachios,
25:54and the corporation talks about how this couple, the Resnicks,
26:00have invested a lot of their own money in all sorts of think tanks
26:06and other organizations that actively lobby for sanctions and war against Iran.
26:12Why? Because Iran used to be the number one exporter of pistachios.
26:17And so it is in their economic interest to ensure that Iran remains sanctioned,
26:24Iran remains unable to produce or export.
26:27It still produces pistachios, and they're delicious.
26:31But, like, you know, it will have a hard time exporting those pistachios as a result of U.S. policy.
26:39So, you know, these are the sorts of dynamics that I'm hoping we start to pay more attention to,
26:46even within the realm of national security as well as sanctions,
26:49because these private actors are playing a role here.
26:53And that, again, should also cause us to question the extent to which these policies
26:57are really grounded in national security or human rights
27:02or any of the political interests that the U.S. government claims they are grounded in.
27:08They aren't.
27:09They also, in some situations that more than we would probably expect,
27:15also help promote the parochial monetary interests of business people.
27:21So I want to stay on the Iran topic for a while,
27:23because when we think about the current conflict in Iran,
27:27I think there's a conventional interpretation of what's happening here.
27:31And the conventional interpretation is very geopolitical-oriented.
27:35It says there's something – there's some deep conflict going on between Israel and Iran,
27:41but the U.S. is largely a third-party actor,
27:44and there's no national security interest being directly implicated for the U.S. in this current conflict.
27:49And the Trump administration is drawn in by the Israeli regime into this conflict.
27:53So what I'm hearing from your argument is that this is a simplistic reading of the situation.
27:59And if we bring in the economic implications, there's a much more complicated picture.
28:04Could you please let us know what you think of this situation right now?
28:08Well, you know, the United States, as your viewers probably know,
28:13used to have a very close, a very friendly relationship with the Iranian government
28:17until the 1979 revolution, which ousted the Shah of Iran.
28:24And since the 1979 revolution, which was in large part an anti-imperial revolution,
28:33that was designed and, in fact, managed, to some extent at least,
28:39to realize Iranian independence from foreign actors.
28:45Iran had been subject to the direct and indirect control of foreign actors
28:50for a very, very long time, and the revolution was a rejection of that state of affairs.
28:56The U.S. didn't, you know, take kindly to basically having itself ousted from Iran
29:03as a result of that revolution, and so very quickly began to find different ways
29:08to try and undo the effects of that revolution.
29:12It began by supporting Iraq in the war that it launched against Iran
29:17shortly after the revolution started, a war that was designed to destabilize,
29:23and for many of the supporters of Iraq, their hope was that it would actually cause the revolution
29:29to come crashing down.
29:31The United States supported Iraq in that war,
29:35and it also began, you know, it started, you know, the first sanctions in Iran
29:39come in response to the hostage crisis in November of 1979,
29:43but in fact, those sanctions had actually already been designed
29:48and planned by the United States for the purposes of preventing Iran
29:54from removing its assets from U.S. banks.
29:57The concern was that the removal of those assets would hurt U.S. banks,
30:01and so the administration had already designed a sanctions package to prevent that from happening,
30:08but it then uses the hostage crisis as the pretext to actually implement those sanctions.
30:14So those are the first set of sanctions, but again, they then,
30:17the United States continues with those sanctions, with this sort of sanctions mindset,
30:22as a way of punishing Iran and trying to undermine the sovereignty.
30:28Iran was desperately trying to finally realize itself throughout the 80s.
30:32It continues into the 90s, and in fact, the worst set of sanctions
30:36first come against Iran in the mid-1990s under the Clinton administration,
30:42targeting Iran's oil industry,
30:45and a big part of the purpose of those sanctions
30:48was to prevent Iran from rearming after the Iran-Iraq war
30:52and rebuilding after the Iran-Iraq war,
30:55and of course the sanctions against Iran continue to become more and more draconian
31:00over the decades that follow,
31:02with the most significant level of sanctions after Clinton coming during the Obama administration.
31:07Again, the way these are presented is that, you know,
31:10these sanctions are necessary for purposes of restraining Iran's nuclear program.
31:16There were no serious concerns about Iran's nuclear program in the 1990s,
31:21that they are somehow necessary because Iran is supporting non-state actors in the region
31:27that are quote-unquote terrorist organizations.
31:30That's a whole other conversation about the impropriety of that designation,
31:36whether or not Iran actually controls those actors, all these sorts of things.
31:40Human rights violations, you know, you name.
31:42So all of these, these are all the sort of pretexts that are given by the United States
31:47for the ways in which it has effectively unleashed an economic war against Iran since the 1979 revolution.
31:55But the real reason, you know, has been the fact that Iran exerted, said enough was enough,
32:03threw out the Americans, tried to be sovereign with its own independent domestic and foreign policy,
32:10and those policies did not align with U.S. interests.
32:15Iran really is the only actor in Western Asia that is meaningfully independent of the United States
32:25and other Western countries.
32:28There isn't another country in the region, including Turkey,
32:32that is truly, like, independent of the West.
32:36Iran is the only one.
32:38And, you know, that ability to resist is something that U.S. power isn't very comfortable with.
32:47And so bringing us now to today, the United States has its own very longstanding, very deep reasons,
32:58not to say that they are, you know, ones that legitimize anything that's happened over,
33:04certainly not since February 28th, nor back in June when the United States bombed Iran.
33:09It has its own interests, longstanding interests,
33:13in wanting to see the current government in Iran eliminated,
33:19and, frankly, wanting to see Iran's sovereignty eliminated as well.
33:24And that's what this war is all about.
33:26It's all about ending Iranian sovereignty, whether it's through regime change or it's through civil war,
33:33but ensuring that Iran is no longer an independent actor within the region and that it comes to heel.
33:39I think that's fascinating.
33:40I did not know that the first U.S. sanctions package was formulated even before the hostage crisis occurred.
33:47I think having that clear timeline really tells you where and why the sanctions policies were formulated.
33:53They're not a response to a national emergency.
33:56They're usually a response to the financial and monetary need of specific U.S. economic infrastructure.
34:01They certainly were in that case, you know.
34:04And, you know, again, I think we have to look at this holistically, look at a variety of different examples
34:09to be able to come to some kind of, like, meaningful conclusion about what U.S. sanctions are at least
34:15doing in part, right?
34:16So I wouldn't argue that all U.S. sanctions are all about, you know, economic interests of the United States.
34:23It's about satisfying the interests of corporations.
34:26I don't have enough information.
34:27I don't have enough proof to be able to argue that.
34:29But I can certainly argue that there are, you know, a number of cases where we do see those interests
34:35really being important and playing a role.
34:37And that should broaden our understanding of what these sanctions, you know, what sanctions policy in the United States, at
34:44least at times, is intended to do.
34:46I want to talk about how states like Iran, who have that autonomy independent from U.S. powers to enforce
34:53its own policies, how can they resist U.S. sanctions?
34:57So when I think about this problem, I think about not just, like, places like Iran who are currently in
35:02a hot conflict directly with the U.S.
35:05I'm thinking about places like Brazil, like China, like Russia, who are occasionally, because of one thing or another, on
35:12the list of U.S. sanctions, who are in constant struggle with the U.S.
35:16And I think traditionally, when people think about how to act against U.S. sanctioning, the thought is very much
35:23there is a national security concern of the U.S., and let's see how we can address or how we
35:28can balance or compromise domestically on those specific U.S. concerns.
35:33But after talking to you, after reading your scholarship, if people think there's an alternative way of interpreting how the
35:40U.S. sanctions policies were formulated, then I think the logical implication is also there should be alternative of how
35:47they should respond to the U.S. sanctions policies.
35:49On one hand, I totally agree with you that national security interests of each country should ultimately be the decider
35:56of what they should act.
35:58But on the other hand, I also see people say that this is not sometimes an issue of whether or
36:02not people want to comply with U.S. sanctions.
36:05It's very much an issue of whether or not U.S. can impose those sanctions on other countries.
36:09For example, like this tariff issue, the tariff implicates – the utilization of tariffs is a unilateral decision made by
36:17the U.S., same as many other unilateral sanctions made by the U.S.
36:21And sometimes international law, public international law, can be a curb on that power to use sanctions or economic coercions
36:28of other forms, but sometimes it cannot.
36:31So when international law cannot be counted on for those countries as a check on U.S. power, what other
36:41measures could they use to better curb that power?
36:46Yeah, so all I was trying to get at is that I think a lot of – I think the
36:51United States works very hard to make it look like its sanctions policies are legitimate.
36:55And I think it's important to question that legitimacy as a starting point, right?
37:00Because, for example, one way in which people will talk about countries pushing back against sanctions will be like sanctions
37:07evasion, which makes it seem like they're doing something that's improper or illegal.
37:13When I think in many cases, especially with secondary sanctions, it's the U.S. that is acting unlawfully and that
37:20the way we should think about the pushback is in terms of resistance, which is the word you used as
37:25well.
37:26So, you know, different – I mean, ideally, countries would work with one another, right, to resist U.S. sanctions.
37:34You know, there's a lot of conversations that have been had about the BRICS, whether or not the BRICS countries
37:42can actually come together to create some kind of meaningful challenge to U.S. sanctions, whether it's through the use
37:50of alternative payment methods or alternatives to the U.S. dollar.
37:55You know, like – but as far as I know, nothing that meaningful or effective has come – has come.
38:03Right.
38:03And I think people are rightfully very frustrated with BRICS because one of its members were attacked – like Iran
38:08was attacked by the U.S. during this conflict.
38:12What did the BRICS countries do?
38:14Like, there's hardly anything.
38:15Right, not much.
38:16I mean, but fundamentally, it is really going to take collaboration amongst a variety of states, the most important ones
38:27being China, India, Brazil.
38:32You know, Russia's got its own issues.
38:34But, like, you know, it's going to take these really important global political and economic actors to really get on
38:42the same page for us to have a long-term solution to U.S. economic coercive practices.
38:52In the short term, you know, we do see countries, some working in concert with other countries, some just doing
39:02it on their own, resisting.
39:03And Iran is and has resisted U.S. economic coercion.
39:08They have developed what they call their resistance economy, which is a whole host of domestic industries, civilian and military,
39:16that have actually created a significant amount of economic independence for Iran.
39:24And we saw a lot of those industries actually being attacked by the U.S. and Israel during the –
39:30you know, after February 28th.
39:32The steel industry in Iran, the aluminum industry in Iran, the pharmaceutical industry in Iran, manufacturers of consumer goods in
39:41Iran.
39:41So it was an understanding by the U.S. and Israel that Iran's resistance was not meaningless.
39:48You know, it's not been enough to inure Iran from, you know, the very devastating impacts of U.S. sanctions.
39:56But the development of this kind of independence within Iran has helped tremendously in terms of preventing the economy and
40:05the political system of entering into complete free fall.
40:11Right. This also goes back to what you said about the war's ultimate end is destroying Iranian independence, not just
40:18nuclear proliferation.
40:19But again, as this example also suggests, it takes long-term planning.
40:24You know, there are no short-term fixes to the dominance of the United States economically, politically, militarily, obviously.
40:33You need actual long-term planning, either by individual states to create, you know, a kind of internal resistance to
40:44these sanctions, or ideally, alongside that, collaboration between states to create an ecosystem, a global ecosystem for meaningfully resisting sanctions.
40:59You know, the shadow fleet, for example, that Iran uses and other states that are sanctioned uses to get their
41:06oil around, that's not going to do it, right?
41:08Like, that is such a small piece of a much bigger puzzle when it comes to actually unwinding the dominance
41:15of the U.S. dollar, the dominance of the U.S. financial system.
41:19You know, again, tariffs have also highlighted another way in which countries are vulnerable to U.S. economic pressure, and
41:27that's through trade.
41:29You know, I'm not suggesting that we all turn into, you know, that all countries just turn inward and have
41:36nothing to do with the rest of the world.
41:38I don't think that's a good idea, either, but I do think that there needs to be far more intentional
41:44work done by the – especially by the most important global players on how to actually think about the interrelationship
41:52between the various economies of the planet,
41:56the currencies used to actually denominate most transactions, the systems used to make those transactions actually effective, and how the
42:05United States' role in all of that can be diminished.
42:07So your focus is very much on institution building and not alliance making, but solidarity is open throughout as the
42:16war to say, like, this is what we need against the U.S.,
42:19but solidarity can also sound a little bit half hollow because without treaties, without formal corporations, just saying the people
42:29of this country share solidarity with the people of that country can often sound, like, ineffective, right?
42:35And I want us to end on a slightly more positive note because there aren't much from my perspective.
42:45I'm not a very optimistic person.
42:48And when I look at the U.N. resolution against Iran, 140 countries saying that the Iranians who blocked the
42:55Strait of Hormuz was violating international law and countries are condemning Iran instead of Israel and the U.S.
43:01for instituting, for initiating this hot war against Iran, that made me so frustrated.
43:07But then I looked at some tiny, tiny things, like when Trump pressured Brazilian President Lula, and then Lula immediately
43:16went to China, signed a trade agreement with China, and then went back to Trump saying that, hey, if you
43:21pressure us, we have other alternatives.
43:24That gave me a slight hope.
43:26What is giving you hope in this time when there's not much to be found around?
43:32Yeah, I mean, I think that – I think what we are seeing over the course of the last few
43:40years, but in particular over the course of the last few months, is actually meaningful resistance to U.S. global
43:52power, economically and militarily.
43:54You know, my family is from Iran, many family members in Iran, and so I'm not saying I welcome this
44:03war because I absolutely do not.
44:05But I have become more hopeful in seeing the most sanctioned country, I would say the most sanctioned country ever
44:20in the history of the planet, militarily resist and actually do some serious damage militarily, politically, and economically to the
44:33standing of the United States.
44:35Over the last few weeks, Iran, you know, Iran, you know, Iran is not going to militarily defeat the United
44:43States.
44:43It knows that.
44:45It's not going to be able to overcome the horrendous impacts of U.S. sanctions on its own, despite, you
44:54know, its efforts to create domestic economic independence.
44:58But the vast majority of people, I think, and states, and certainly the Trump administration, thought that it would crumble
45:08in the face of massive military onslaught from the United States and Israel.
45:15And it didn't, and it didn't, and it didn't just not do that.
45:18It actually created significant damage itself.
45:21And I think that that example of a country who was and is constrained by so many things, being able
45:32to actually push back and achieve its own victories,
45:41is a lesson to the rest of the world, to countries that have far more resources than Iran has, far
45:48more political power than Iran has, that they don't just have to cow to the United States.
45:54You know, I'm drawing this conclusion myself, but it's after the war against Iran that you see Mexico say, we
46:04are going to send oil to Cuba.
46:06It's after the war starts in Iran that Russia successfully sends an oil tanker to Cuba, that Spain says, we
46:16are going to provide humanitarian aid.
46:18That you see all of these countries suddenly come to the aid of Cuba, which we all know is next
46:24on the list when it comes to the U.S.'s, the countries the United States is targeting to destroy from
46:31a sovereignty standpoint.
46:32So, to me, actually, weirdly enough, the war against Iran is one that has given me hope, because, at least
46:41so far, the Iranians have actually been able to demonstrate to the world that you can actually stand up against
46:47the United States.
46:49You can actually rise up, and you can inspire a lot of people while you're doing that.
46:54Thank you, Professor Jamshidi.
46:55That's as good a note as any to end on.
46:57I hope you're doing okay.
46:58I hope your family in Iran is doing all right.
47:00Thank you so much.
47:02It's been a pleasure.
47:03So, that was our show with Professor Maryam Jamshidi at University of Colorado Law School.
47:10What she said at the end really stuck with me.
47:14She found hope in the current Iran conflict, even when her family was still in Iran.
47:21When I asked her that question, where do you find hope in this time when there's so much death, destruction,
47:28disorder in the international system,
47:30I was expecting her to say something like, institution-building treaty alliances that checks the U.S. power.
47:41But in the end, what she said, I think, was much, much more powerful.
47:47In a sense, what she said was, you should never be afraid to call things like what it is if
47:55you know what it is.
47:56And you should never fail to see humanity and see the human spirit of resistance to power, even in the
48:05darkest times.
48:06Maybe that's the lesson here.
48:07And if you've enjoyed this show, if you want to hear more from experts such as Professor Maryam Jamshidi, please
48:14hit a like and subscribe.
48:16This is what keeps this show going.
48:18Thank you very much.
48:24And this was another episode of China Now, a show that opens a window to the present and future of
48:32the Asian giant.
48:33Hope you enjoyed it.
48:34See you next time.
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