Have the US sanctions hit Iran or benefited this country?

Since 2017, the Trump administration has placed layers of tough sanctions on Iran in an effort to deprive the regime of financial resources and to force it to negotiate a new nuclear deal.

The sanctions now in place are creating new international patterns of trade that are potentially detrimental to the U.S., European, and regional economies.

One obvious “opportunity cost” of sanctions is that they exclude U.S. and allied firms from potentially lucrative business opportunities in Iran. 

Michael Schumann, Chairman of the Board of the German Federal Association for Economic Development and Foreign Trade (BWA) says that the disconnection of commercial communication is more detrimental to the German businessmen than it is to Iran and we have failed to take advantage of existing potential in Iran.

Moreover goods from China and India, two of the countries that have sought to avoid sanctions on Iranian banks by bartering for oil, are taking hold in the Iranian market, and it may prove difficult to realign trade patterns to include the EU countries (for which Iran was a fairly significant market in the past).

The Gulf Cooperation Council countries, which had enjoyed a blossoming of trade activity with Iran before tightened sanctions took effect, fear the loss of that income.

Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of unofficial, black-market trade between Iran and Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey is distorting and undermining the economies of those states and the region. 

Despite the Trump administration's crushing sanctions, there is "a misunderstanding of the level of complexity of Iran's economy and how good they are or how experienced they are with resisting sanctions."

Over the past four decades, Iran has had a lot of experience with sanctions and has learned to withstand their impact, and it's no different this time.

A shortage of imported goods due to sanctions has helped spur domestic production. That, in turn, has helped create more employment for Iranians.