Sanctions absolutely do apply to Iranians (even dual citizens) anywhere in the world, albeit less intensively.
> not everyone in Iran is Iranian
Swing and a miss. Sanctions are primarily against Iranian nationals, and extend to any non-Iranian who violated the sanctions. If you visit Iran as an American/Chinese/Antractican you don't automatically end up sanctioned.
> The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders
And that makes it okay? Nuking civilians can also be a tactic to pressure the leaders into surrender. And nukes may take fewer lives than decades of intense sanctions.
> I am NOT asking for the removal of the sanctions targeted at the Islamic Republic of Iran.
All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government. Just a bullying tactic by the US with zero moral justifications, despite how it's framed by the media.
> All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government.
That requires some blind faith to believe. In that I don't think those applying them really expect overthrowing the government to result.
I would guess sanctions are designed to hurt and weaken, to make them less of an adversary. Although that's a harder sell, so doesn't get presented that way.
They may not be normal civilians, but many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials, which does make them civilians. In other cases sanctions are targeted at government officials personally rather than the parts of government they influence, like targeting their side business, their stock, or their personal property.
There are sanctions targeting governments specifically, but usually government sanctions also target civilians. You can't exactly expect a sanctioned government to be transparent, it'll hide its government business under company names if you let it.
> but many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials
That's the thing in a crony dictatorship: these people might not hold public office in name, but in practice they act under direct license, authority and orders of the dictator. We're already seeing this in Hungary, where close friends of the local de-facto-dictator Viktor Orban control almost all media and absolutely use that ownership to further entrench Orban's rule - it's hard to achieve political change when the media simply doesn't care about you.
And now, we're seeing the beginnings in the US, just from another angle - public kowtowing and open extortion, such as with Jimmy Kimmel who got cancelled after a threat to block a corporate merger, and it's not the first time either. And no, the fact that Disney walked back after their stock price took a decent dip doesn't mean that this is the last time such an event will take place.
> many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials, which does make them civilians
By that definition Putin is a civilian.
More broadly: plenty of sanctions explicitly target military-only kit. Those are not “designed to hurt civilians,” though I guess a civilian working in a munitions factory might lose their job.
Citation needed. As far is I know this is simply false. Different sanctions have different goals. Regime change is very rarely a goal. Often it is to reduce economic growth to keep/make the country weak, or to achieve some other goal. See for example sactions on India, which are definitely not meant to overthrow the indian government.
So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?
I’m aware there are consequences to sanctions, and the way they are implemented is often half-assed or hypocritical (e.g. the way that russian oil still flows) but to drop all sanctions…
Is that not like saying boycotts hurt employees who had nothing to do with the decisions so we should never boycott?
What does that mean? Like in a practical sense - russia declares war on ukraine… next step is? Move towards a multipolar equilibrium? How? How long does that take.
Yes ideally we’d live in a world where this bullshit doesn’t happen. But it does happen, so our choices are to respond with the tools we have NOW or not respond at all.
> So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?
That's what the US has been doing since forever, even actively participating in the war crimes.
If you think any of the stated reasons for the sanctions are real, I have a bridge to sell you.
> its fans told me that if I liked it and wasn't a Communist, I was missing the point that it was mocking me.
As a communist who loves DE: The game mocks you even If you are any flavour of socialist/communist, and I don't think this is at odds with liking the game.
Can't take the "propaganda" and "misinformation" excuses seriously when the German establishment media has been blatantly lying to their teeth about an ongoing genocide, and smearing anyone who stood for an obvious moral cause with 0 repercussion. They make the Israeli far-right newspapers blush.
Criticizing Nazi Germany was also "vogue" at some point and sympathisers of the third Reich had similar justifications for "self-defense" against Jews.
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