In a rare moment of candor, former Trump administration officials are now admitting that economic sanctions — one of their most aggressive foreign policy tools — don’t actually work. This admission, coming from the architects of the U.S. “maximum pressure” campaigns, is telling. It confirms what many in sanctioned countries, and those who study them, have known for years: sanctions fail at their stated goals, while inflicting enormous harm on civilian populations.

So if sanctions don’t lead to human rights improvements or regime change, why is Washington still addicted to them? In the 21st century alone, U.S. sanctions have increased over 900 percent, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Because sanctions are not about strategy — they are about control.

My research across heavily sanctioned states like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea shows that sanctions entrench authoritarian rule, hollow out economies and punish ordinary people. But they persist because they serve deeper interests — economic, political and ideological — in the states that inflict them. Sanctions are tools of economic warfare disguised as diplomacy. And behind them lies a powerful force shaping U.S. policy: elite competition.

Take the case of Iran’s pistachio industry. For decades, Iran and California were the two global powerhouses in pistachio production. But under U.S. sanctions, Iranian farmers were locked out of international markets, and California’s Wonderful Company — owned by billionaire couple Stewart and Lynda Resnick — secured dominance. Through targeted lobbying efforts, the Resnicks have consistently advocated for stricter sanctions on Iran, arguing that such measures are necessary to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and regional influence. But the real prize was market control. This is how sanctions work in practice: under the cover of geopolitics, they enable corporate monopolies and enrich well-connected elites.

Nearly one-third of the world’s countries are under some form of U.S. sanctions.

This isn’t an isolated example. In today’s global sanctions regime, nearly one-third of the world’s countries are under some form of U.S. sanctions. Behind many of these policies are lobbying networks — agribusinesses, defense contractors, diaspora groups, even sanctioned individuals hiring Washington’s top firms — all........

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