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The Invasion of Iran is a Near Certainty

An Iranian vendor sells pistachios in the old main bazaar in Tehran, where sanctions have caused the price of some goods to double. (AP Photo)

Last Friday, The Jakarta Globe reported on how Iran is offering gold and tankers of oil in return for food, a sign of desperation following new economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union. The article quoted the owner of a Tehran pastry shop. “We are going bankrupt and will probably be closed within weeks,” the owner said. “All my ingredients come from abroad. Either the prices suddenly doubled or they stopped being shipped. We are doomed.”


Since its rise as the global superpower in the latter half of the 20th century, the US has preferred the option of imposing market forces and manipulating them to the advantage of US capital, as opposed to direct colonial settlement and domination. This differentiates the US from the former European colonial powers, who, for the most part, captured and held colonial territories. The primary goal of economic sanctioning is to force the targeted government to change their policies and behavior. 

However, it is not the targeted government who suffers the worst of these effects; it is the everyday person who is suffocated and deprived of their necessities, the general population who are starved and injured.

Economic sanctions as experienced by Iraq and now by Iran are the most overt and obvious manifestation of economic violence. Consider Iraq at the turn of the millennium, which was at that time a country suffering a slow death. Ten years of economic sanctions imposed by the UN and enforced by the US and Britain had, to quote Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, “killed more people than the two atomic bombs dropped in Japan, including over half a million children.” 

In fact, the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq during the 1990s, estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of well over 1 million civilians, killed significantly more people than the Persian-Gulf war, where the death toll is estimated to have been around 40,000. They also killed far more people than the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, where the civilian death-toll is estimated to have been around 20,000. There is a name for this: Systemic violence, a violence which is every bit as brutal and destructive as direct, military warfare.

Despite the usual orientalist attitudes and constructions which depict the Iranian people as backwards, this is far removed from the truth. Many Iranians know their history, and they remember how Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Iranian president who nationalized Britain’s oil possessions in Iran in 1951, was overthrown by the CIA and MI6 in 1953. 

They also remember how this resulted in the birth of the brutal, Western backed Shah dictatorship, which lasted until the 1979 revolution. It is only logical, therefore, to presume that any interference by Western powers in Iran is seen as both an attack on Iran’s sovereignty and an insult to the Iranian people’s national consciousness, history, and identity. The Iranian government has no intention of giving up its program of uranium enrichment, sanctions or no sanctions. 

These are the words coming from Tehran as vocalized by President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khameini. It would be wise to believe them. By punishing ordinary Iranian civilians, Western powers are therefore creating the space for increasing anti-Western sentiment. This benefits the Iranian government, which is then able to mobilize the people under a common banner, which speaks of resistance to imperialist aggression and domination.

The goal of economic sanctioning is to punish the target government, a means of punishment which is much cheaper than military invasion. The problem is that economic sanctions very rarely achieve their political aims, and as such, they usually precede all-out warfare. This is what happened in Iraq, and it is exactly what will happen in Iran, an outcome rooted in basic determinism. 

To suggest the outcome will be otherwise is to argue against the entire tide of Euro-American history, which is the history of colonialism and imperialism, genocide, exploitation and slavery. Be it Israel, the US, the UK, or a mixture of all three, one thing is certain: The invasion of Iran is a near certainty. The question which remains is therefore not a question of if; rather, it is a question of when?

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