http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/08/03-iran-sanctions-future-nuclear-deal-maloney?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoguK3IZKXonjHpfsX57uQsW6Sg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YYIS8p0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEIQ7XYTLB2t60MWA%3D%3D

Un-sanctioning Iran: What the nuclear deal means for the future of sanctions

When Hassan Rouhani was elected to the Iranian presidency on a platform of ending Tehran’s debilitating impasse with the world over its nuclear program, foreign policy analysts applauded the shift as a victory for the use of economic sanctions. That assessment was substantially correct: the fierce multilateral sanctions regime erected between 2007 and 2013 played a pivotal role in persuading Iran to abandon its recalcitrance toward the nuclear negotiations with six world powers, including the United States.

Ultimately, however, the text of the final deal concluded last month suggests a more ambivalent bottom line. The disparity between the agreement’s sweeping sanctions relief and the more parsimonious scope of its constraints on Tehran’s nuclear activities underscores the limitations to the use of sanctions as leverage in the negotiations themselves.

In this respect, the deal serves as a useful corrective to the recent infatuation with sanctions and the corresponding tendency to overestimate their efficacy in solving international problems without the use of military force. Sanctions may have been the silver bullet that brought Iran back to the negotiating table, but they proved too blunt an instrument to advance the most advantageous terms of a deal. http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/08/03-iran-sanctions-future-nuclear-deal-maloney?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoguK3IZKXonjHpfsX57uQsW6Sg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YYIS8p0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEIQ7XYTLB2t60MWA%3D%3D