Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr will discuss the most sanctioned country in the world, Iran, and whether sanctions work in the way they should.

This event will be a discussion around the book How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare by Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Ali Vaez published by Stanford University Press.

Sanctions have enormous consequences. Especially when imposed by a country with the economic influence of the United States, sanctions induce clear shockwaves in both the economy and political culture of the targeted state, and in the everyday lives of citizens. But do economic sanctions induce the behavioural changes intended? Do sanctions work in the way they should?

To answer these questions, the authors of How Sanctions Work highlight Iran, the most sanctioned country in the world. Comprehensive sanctions are meant to induce uprisings or pressures to change the behaviour of the ruling establishment, or to weaken its hold on power. But, after four decades, the case of Iran shows the opposite to be true: sanctions strengthened the Iranian state, impoverished its population, increased state repression, and escalated Iran's military posture toward the U.S. and its allies in the region. Instead of offering an 'alternative to war,' sanctions have become a cause of war. 

Copies of the book will be available to purchase at the event, and can also be purchased via The Gilded Acorn bookshop on campus. 

Meet the speakers

Narges Bajoghli is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins-SAIS, is an award-winning anthropologist, scholar, and filmmaker. Her book, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic received the 2020 Margaret Mead Award, 2020 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title, and the 2021 Silver Medal in Independent Publisher Book Awards. She co-authored How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare and directed the documentary "The Skin That Burns”. Bajoghli has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Jacobin. She has appeared as a commentator on CNN, DemocracyNow!, NPR, BBC WorldService, BBC NewsHour, PBS NewsHour, and in Spanish on radio across Latin America. Bajoghli is the co-director of SAIS Rethinking Iran.

Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins-SAIS, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. From 2012 to 2019, he served as the Dean of the School, and from 2009 to 2011, he was the Senior Advisor to U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. He authored The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat; Forces of Fortune: The Rise of a New Muslim Middle Class and How it Will Change Our World; The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future; Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty; and co-authored How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare. He has written for The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Nasr is the co-director of SAIS Rethinking Iran.

Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. She was previously the Programme’s deputy director and senior research fellow, and led project work on Iran and Gulf Arab dynamics. Sanam’s research focuses on regional security, Gulf geopolitics, and on future trends in Iran’s domestic and foreign policy. Sana is also the James Anderson professorial lecturer in the Middle East Studies department at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS Europe) in Bologna, Italy. Before these appointments, Sanam was an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at SAIS Washington. She served as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations also providing research analysis to the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa department. Sanam is the author of Action and Reaction: Women and Politics in Iran (Bloomsbury 2013). She publishes analysis and comments for a variety of media and academic outlets.

This event will be chaired by Steffen Hertog, Department of Government, LSE.

Steffen Hertog is Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics. He was previously Kuwait Professor at Sciences Po in Paris, lecturer in Middle East political economy at Durham University and a post-doc at Princeton University. Steffen’s main interest lies in Gulf and Middle East political economy, with a specific focus on the political economy of public sectors, state-business relations and labour markets. He has a subsidiary interest in issues in the socio-economic and psychological roots of highly asymmetric political violence ("terrorism").

The LSE Middle East Centre builds on LSE's long engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and provides a central hub for the wide range of research on the region carried out at LSE.

The Department of International Relations at LSE is one of the oldest as well as largest IR departments in the world.