This essay will draw on the examples of the US embargo on Cuba and anti-Iran sanctions to analyse the internal mechanisms that lead to target state resilience. It will argue that the regimes in Cuba and Iran have consolidated their power and legitimacy, firstly through economic reforms and the selective adoption of neoliberal policies to mitigate the effects of sanctions, and secondly through ideologically-supported national discourses of resistance. By implementing measures conducive to economic survival and social cohesion, both countries have endured decades of sanctions and resisted external attempts to induce regime change. The first part of the essay will explore sanctions resilience in theory and consider how failure to account for certain mechanisms within target states may render sanctions regimes counter-productive. The second section will turn to the examples of Cuba and Iran. It will begin by analysing the effects of specific policy changes, such as the legalisation of self-employment in Cuba and economic diversification in Iran as well as the emergence of resistance economies in both countries. It will then turn to population-centric social reforms, particularly in the education sector, and conclude that the two key mechanisms enabling Cuban and Iranian resilience to sanctions are the mitigation of political insecurity through economic reforms and the reinforcement of anti-Western national discourse through ideology.

The following analysis of resilience mechanisms will centre around post-1979 Revolution Iran and Cuba since its ‘Special Period’, the economic crisis that began after the fall of the Soviet Union and marked the intensification of the US sanctions regime (Hove, Ndawana, and Nhemachena 2020, 181). The main objective of sanctions in both cases has been to create enough hardship to induce policy change: In Cuba, the US sanctions sought an end to the Castro regime (Rodríguez 2024, 187); in Iran, although objectives have shifted since the implementation of sanctions, the principal aims have been democratisation and to stop the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons (Esfandiary and Fitzpatrick 2011, 143). While research on sanctions resilience is abundant, less attention has been paid to the internal reforms that help regimes withstand economic pressure. This essay therefore aims to contribute to the growing literature on this topic, employing an interpretivist line of inquiry to explore Cuba and Iran’s resilience-enhancing measures on the domestic level. Furthermore, by comparing a small island state and a resource-rich country, the essay looks beyond regime types and external trade relationships, focusing instead on sanctioned states’ response to external pressure through societal mobilisation.

The essay will refer to the World Trade Organization’s definition of economic resilience: “the ability of a system […] to prevent and prepare for, cope with and recover from shocks” (World Trade Organization 2021, 7). It must be acknowledged that resilience does not mean economic prosperity. According to Human Rights Watch’s World Report (2023, 171), the Cuban population suffers from food and medicine scarcity, regular blackouts, and a deterioration of living conditions. Similarly, US sanctions regularly compromise Iran’s ability to provide basic social services, most notably during the Covid-19 pandemic (Abdoli 2020, 1464). Resilience is therefore equated to endurance, which Cuba and Iran have demonstrated through the longevity of their regimes and pursuit of unfavourable policies despite decades of sanction-related economic hardship.

Sanctions Resilience in Theory

To analyse the mechanisms that make sanctions fail, it is first vital to identify those that make them successful. Mainstream sanctions literature posits that once a certain threshold of economic suffering is reached, a sanctioned population will push for political change from the government (Hove, Ndawana, and Nhemachena 2020, 176). This assumption has led to the erroneous belief amongst certain policymakers that the more pressure is exerted on a population, the sooner its government will comply with a sender state’s demands. Nephew questions this emphasis on inflicting suffering, noting that while this concept is crucial to sanctions’ success, it simultaneously limits their impact in the long run: “Pain causes discomfort that most people seek to avoid, but it can also be managed, tolerated, and […] adapted to, even to the profit of its recipient” (Nephew 2017, 9). The interplay of forces between governments means that widespread human suffering does not necessarily lead to the political concessions desired by a sender. Therefore, pain management or mitigation undertaken by a targeted regime can lessen the effects of sanctions and build resilience.

The failure of various sanctions regimes to achieve their stated objectives has reinvigorated the debate over the risks of unintended consequences. Sanction efficiency is generally measured by the initiating state’s ability to change a target state’s internal or external policies (Timofeev 2024, 151). As mentioned previously, this understanding of success overlooks longer-term developments, including adaptation. Galtung (1967, 388) contends that through adaptation, the conditions that seemed unacceptable at the onset of a conflict turn acceptable as the population becomes accustomed to hardship. Positivist accounts, which tend to overlook this process, have largely concluded that sanctions have been successful at constraining the material and military capabilities of states like Cuba and Iran (Kirkham, Jia, and Woo 2024, 48). Although this assertion is correct, it does not in itself guarantee sanction effectiveness: for sanctions aimed at effecting regime change to be considered successful, they must bring about a desired change in political leadership or policies within a target state. Though useful for analysing the immediate effects of sanctions, positivist accounts often fail to consider their long durée and the mechanisms by which they operate (Kirkham, Jia, and Woo 2024, 48). The longevity of the Castro regime and the Islamic Republic, as well as Iran’s ongoing nuclear weapons programme, reveal the theoretical shortcomings of many mainstream interpretations of sanctions success.

Critical theories are therefore valuable for shedding light on the reciprocal nature of sanctions and the processes by which target states become resilient to external pressure. The Welfare State Regime Reproduction, for instance, outlines counter-hegemonic trends that can arise as a result of sanctions, including institutionally-driven popular mobilisation and the solidification of the national identity within a targeted society (Kirkham 2022, 352). A sanctioning state’s intention of inducing political change may unintentionally engineer conditions favourable to regime consolidation. This is especially true for states with strong ideological regimes, which appear to be less responsive to the hardships generated by sanctions (Takeyh and Maloney 2011, 1297). In such cases, ideology can serve as a powerful guide for the behaviours of households and individuals, as doctrinaire Islam does in Iran (Kirkham 2022, 349). The success of sanctions thus hinges equally as much on the........

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