President Trump announced the United States would impose a new round of sanctions on Iran in response to the regime’s missile attacks, a move tantamount to “economic warfare,” according to Rep. Ilhan Omar.
“This makes no sense. Sanctions are economic warfare,” the Minnesota Democrat said Wednesday on Twitter. “They have already caused medical shortages and countless deaths in Iran. You cannot claim to want deescalation and then announce new sanctions with no clear goal. This is not a measured response!”
Equating economic sanctions to an act of war is not just extreme; it’s dishonest. Sanctions are an instrumental foreign policy tool and a coercive measure that prevents military conflict, and thus, war. But Omar is right about a few things: Sanctions do have consequences, and they can do damage to diplomacy. At the same time, they can also create a channel for diplomacy by leaving hostile regimes, such as Iran, with no choice but to come to the negotiating table. Even the Obama administration argued that economic sanctions were an instrumental tool in bringing Iran to the table to negotiate the Iran deal — which Omar supports.
Omar’s opposition to sanctions against Iran is especially hypocritical, considering her ongoing support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel.
The goal of BDS is to force Israel to make concessions to Palestinians by suffocating its economy, boycotting its products, and encouraging corporations to divest their economic benefits from the country. In Omar’s own words, this is economic warfare. Yet, she still supports it.
The House overwhelmingly voted to condemn BDS late last summer. The move was opposed by Omar, who has dismissed accusations of anti-Semitism and attacked Israel for humans rights violations.
But Omar just revealed the true nature of BDS through her own hypocrisy. Sanctions against Iran, an antagonistic regime that has persecuted Christians and Sunni Muslims, slaughtered pro-freedom protesters, and promoted terrorism in the Middle East and abroad, doesn’t deserve sanctions. But Israel, a U.S. ally, does? This position makes no sense — unless you believe, as many BDS supporters do, that Israel should not exist. And sanctions are just one way they hope to delegitimize Israel and eventually extinguish it.
Omar claims sanctions are problematic when it comes to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, but she’s willing to make an exception for Israel. And we all know why.
