Trump’s Iran strategy ignores that pressure campaigns rarely work

If there is a lesson from the last several weeks of tension between the United States and Iran, it is this: Pressure campaigns on their own very rarely result in positive outcomes. In fact, in most cases, jabbing other countries with a pointy stick only makes them angrier and more hostile.

Economic sanctions have become one of the most widely-deployed pressure tools in American politics. The Trump administration sanctioned 1,500 entities, individuals, firms, and financial institutions in multiple countries in 2018 alone, hoping to significantly alter adversaries’ behavior.