Are Iranian sanctions a good idea?

The Boston Globe
December 22, 1979
By Roger Fisher

The United States should use economic sanctions against Iran only if to do so would advance American interests. Our interests are: An orderly world, a good reputation for the United States, and, consistent with those, the freedom of the hostages.

Some people talk as though the freedom of the hostages came first, but that is clearly wrong. If we did not care more for our reputation and for avoiding a precedent dangerous to international order, we would long ago have seized the shah and exchanged him for those held in Iran.

American interests are being well served by our present policy of restraint.

International order is enhanced by the precedent being set: seizing diplomatic hostages has failed to coerce the United States. And the government of Iran's defense of the hostage-taking has rallied the world in support of international law.

The reputation of the United States has been improved: all countries support our refusal to yield to Iranian coercion. They support our decision to offer Iran nothing more - and no less- than that to which Iran is lawfully entitled.

Although most hostages have not yet been released, our firmness is undermining Iran's insistence upon the shah and upon criminal trials. Few doubt that we are currently moving toward the eventual release of the hostages and some kind of cathartic ceremony which exposes past sins of the shah and the United States.

In these circumstances, what would be accomplished by our imposing economic sanctions on Iran and asking others to do so? Would it serve our interests?

There is every indication that sanctions would fail to coerce Iran. Some countries, like the Soviet Union, could hardly be expected to join in. Even if they did, the actual economic impact over the next months and perhaps years would be lost in the current economic chaos in Iran. If unemployment is said to be 40 percent now, what more would sanctions do? Yet as a political symbol our action would provide Khomeini with a foreign devil to unite Iranians in his support and with someone to blame for all of Iran's troubles. Further, it would certainly be at least as politically difficult for Khomeini to yield to American coercion as for Carter to yield to Iranian coercion.

Our sanctions against Cuba turned Castro from a small-time revolutionary into a world figure; sanctions against Iran could well do the same for Khomeini. Long-term detention or punishment of the hostages, as in Cuba, could then be justified as retaliation against the United States.

So far as international order is concerned, sanctions would shift the impact of the Iranian precedent: No longer would it be seen as an example of the world united against Iran's illegal attempt to coerce the Untied States, and of our principled and successful resistance. The Iranian precedent would become that of a divided world watching a helpless United States try unsuccessfully to coerce little Iran.

And our American reputation could hardly benefit. A few photographs of hungry Iranian children could quickly shift world attention from innocent American hostages to even more innocent and more numerous victims of our economic warfare. The total failure of the economic sanctions we imposed following the revolutions in the Soviet Union, in China, and in Cuba hardly suggests that we now impose economic sanctions following the revolution in Iran. Further open-ended measures like holding hostages or economic sanctions tend to become out of date as time passes. We should let that trend embarrass Iran, not us.

However much Khomeini may welcome a foreign foe, we need not fall into that trap. We need not abandon the contest of principle and patient firmness, where we are strong and ahead, for a policy of economic coercion against a whole people where Iranians will have greater legitimacy and both the power and the incentive to frustrate us.

The hostages remain in custody because, even more highly than their freedom, we value international order and the reputation for integrity of the United States. We owe it to those hostages to so conduct ourselves that each additional day they stay in custody the strong becomes the precedent that a handful of radicals cannot manipulate the Untied States into irrational action, and the better becomes the reputation of the United States. Ironically, the sooner we make clear to Iran that delay benefits us, the sooner the hostages will be released.

A public that clamors for leadership should ask its President to hold the helm steady in pursuit of America's interests. It is not leadership for a President to thrash around every day with some fresh reaction to the latest confused signal from Tehran in order to appease angry and less thoughtful voters at home.