Creepy Nicholas Kristof Rejoices in Murderous Iran Sanctions
There is something more than a little creepy about Nicholas Kristof’s incessant interest in prostitutes — only out of concern for their well-being, of course — as he travels across the planet. But in his most recent trek across Iran, he abandons his obsession for a bit in order to look at the U.S. sanctions directed at the beleaguered country, which has suffered at the hands of the U.S. since the 1953 CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh, who had the effrontery to claim Iran’s oil wealth for Iran.
But “Pinched and Griping in Iran,” the title of Kristof’s column, at least is forthright about the aim and effects of sanctions. We often hear that sanctions, whether aimed at Iraq as in the 1990s or at Syria and Iran today, are “targeted.” They will only affect the powerful in the targeted country, or so we are told. At times the War Party’s line crumbles, as with Madeline Albright’s infamous judgment that the death of 500,000 children at the hands of Bill Clinton’s sanctions was “a price worth paying.” But is such suffering the intent of the sanctions or “merely” accidental collateral murder?
Here Kristof is refreshingly, albeit chillingly, honest in his appraisal. Do sanctions only affect the powerful? Kristof answers: “Yet one lesson from my 1,700-mile drive around the country [Iran] is that, largely because of Western sanctions, factories are closing, workers are losing their jobs, trade is faltering, and prices are surging. This is devastating to the average Iranian’s pocketbook — and pride.” But is that the intent? The well-connected pundit proclaims: “To be blunt, sanctions are succeeding as intended: They are inflicting prodigious economic pain on Iranians and are generating discontent.” Or more pointedly, from a member of a demographic that Kristof is always eager to interview: “’The economy is breaking people’s backs,’ a young woman told me in western Iran.”
