The Sanctions Age

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• Why the U.S. and Iran are Struggling to Reach a Deal 01.06.2026 45Min.

  Ali Vaez on the fraught negotiations between Washington and Tehran. In late February, the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran—a war that killed the country’s supreme leader, closed the Strait of Hormuz, pushed the global economy to the brink, and brought the Middle East closer to all-out conflagration than at any point in a generation. Now, amid a ceasefire that has held without ever being formalized, a draft framework for a comprehensive agreement between Washington a...
• Cuba's Unprecedented Crisis 25.05.2026 45Min.

  María José Espinosa on the unprecedented crisis in Cuba. For more than sixty years, the United States has waged an economic war against Cuba. The sanctions first imposed in 1960 were designed, in the words of a secret State Department memorandum, to bring about "hunger, desperation and overthrow of government." Six decades later, the sanctions pressure has reached unprecedented levels. In January 2026, the Trump administration signed an executive order blocking oil shipments to the isla...
• How to Fight an Economic War 18.05.2026 47Min.

  Edward Fishman on how to fight an economic war. It has been an extraordinary year in American economic statecraft and economic warfare. When today’s guest last appeared on the show, it was April 2025. We spoke just days after Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs had thrown global markets into chaos. At the time, much of the conversation about economic warfare was speculation about what Trump might do. A year later, we know what Trump’s economic warfare looks like in practice—and it’s no...
• Studying Sanctions Through a Feminist Lens 11.05.2026 41Min.

  Lisa Neal on understanding sanctions as a form of structural violence. Debates about sanctions tend to follow a familiar script. Who is being targeted? Will the measures change behavior? What are the economic costs to the sender country? These are legitimate questions. But they have a common blind spot: they describe sanctions from the outside, in the language of strategy and pressure, and rarely address what life is like for the ordinary people who live under them. This episode examines how ...
• Germany’s Vulnerability in the Geoeconomic 'Zeitenwende' 04.05.2026 53Min.

  Sascha Lohmann on the impact of tariffs and sanctions on the German economy. Since the end of the Second World War, the world economy has operated on a set of shared assumptions: trade is mutually beneficial, interdependence engenders stability, and politics and economics are best kept separate. Germany built one of the strongest economies in the world on the basis of these assumptions. But they may no longer hold true. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down global supply chains and reveale...
• What Makes Sanctions Termination So Difficult 27.04.2026 48Min.

  Julia Grauvogel and Hana Attia on the challenges of sanctions termination. When sanctions make the news it is usually because new measures are being imposed on a country, company, or individual. But sometimes, the news is that sanctions are being lifted. As discussed in the first episode of this season, the Trump administration has offered Venezuela sanctions relief as part of the arrangement that brought Delcy Rodriguez to power. The second episode examined the impact of the Iran war on Russ...
• Syria's Complicated Path to Economic Recovery 20.04.2026 40Min.

  Vittorio Maresca di Serracapriola on sanctions relief in Syria. It has been over a year since Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad fled to Moscow and a new government took power in Damascus. Assad’s ouster triggered one of the most rapid reversals of a sanctions regime in recent history. The European Union and the United States essentially raced to be the first to lift sanctions on Syria and most restrictions on engagement with the Syrian economy were removed by December 2025. Encouragingly, the S...
• The Decades-Long Effort to Make Sanctions 'Smart' 13.04.2026 42Min.

  Alistair Millar on the challenges of sanctions reform. A quarter century ago, the United States had sanctioned fewer than 1000 companies, organizations, individuals, and vessels around the world. Today, that total is nearly 17,000. One reason why these measures are being used so expansively is the widespread perception that sanctions are “smart,” designed to be maximally effective while causing minimal humanitarian harm. The notion of “smart sanctions” has a specific origin. The term dates ba...
• How Putin Benefits from the Iran War 06.04.2026 44Min.

  Alexandra Prokopenko on recent developments in the Russian economy. February marked the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It also marked the beginning of a new war. U.S. and Israel airstrikes on Iran have thrust the Persian Gulf into a devastating conflict with profound impacts for the global economy. Unprecedented strikes on energy infrastructure and disruptions in maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz have led to the price of oil—and a wide range of other commod...
• Why Trump Now Controls Venezuela's Future 30.03.2026 49Min.

  Francisco Rodríguez on the ouster of Nicolás Maduro. On January 3 of this year, American special forces captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and extricated him to the United States. But the operation did not oust the Venezuelan regime. Instead, in the subsequent days, the Trump administration announced its intention to work with Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodriguez. President Trump took effective control of Venezuela’s oil industry and Rodriguez obliged, securing some relief from the crus...
• Huawei's Thirty-Year Battle With U.S. Sanctions 16.10.2025 51Min.

  Eva Dou on the rise of Chinese technology giant Huawei. Few companies better embody the promise and peril of China’s rise than Huawei. For nearly three decades, Huawei has steadily climbed towards the peak of the global telecommunications industry—first as a supplier of telecom infrastructure, then as a maker of smartphones, and more recently as a driving force behind Chinese ambitions in 5G, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. Huawei’s ascent has also made it a prime target of...
• Why Sanctions on Iran 'Snapped Back' 06.10.2025 1Std. 14Min.

  Esfandyar Batmanghelidj on the "snapback" of sanctions in Iran. Last week, the host of The Sanctions Age, Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, was interviewed by Derek Davison for an episode of American Prestige, a podcast that takes a comprehensive look at American foreign policy and international affairs. Derek and Esfandyar discussed the death of the Iran nuclear deal, which died last week after the triggering of the “snapback” mechanism and the reimposition of UN sanctions. They delved into Eur...
• Why Oil Sanctions No Longer Work 29.09.2025 53Min.

  Gregory Brew on why oil sanctions no longer work. Few sanctions have been used as aggressively as oil sanctions. These measures are meant to hit oil producing “rogue states” where it hurts, starving governments of vital revenues and forcing changes in policy. But look around the world today and you will see a growing list of countries defying oil sanctions. Iran is still pumping. Russia is still exporting. Venezuela is still finding buyers. Oil sanctions were once thought to be the most...
• Russia’s Commitment to Austerity Under Sanctions 23.09.2025 49Min.

  Nicholas Trickett on how Russia approaches the fiscal pressure of sanctions. Russia is one of the world’s largest economies. It’s a top energy exporter and a major supplier of wheat, fertilizers, wood, and metals. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Western governments have tried to squeeze Russia’s revenues through unprecedented sanctions, price caps, and export controls. How Russia’s economy responds to war and sanctions doesn’t just matter for Moscow or Kyiv — it matters for the price of ...
• How Sanctions Hit a Small Mining Town 15.09.2025 50Min.

  Jeff Stein on the impact of sanctions in a small Guatemalan town. The small Guatemalan town of El Estor was once a bustling mining hub, home to two major nickel mines that provided thousands of jobs and sustained the local government. In 2022, U.S. sanctions shuttered those mines almost overnight, triggering massive job losses, starving the town of public revenues, and collapsing small businesses. Families that had worked their way into the middle class were suddenly plunged into povert...
• The Shadow of Sanctions in Syria 08.09.2025 50Min.

  Karam Shaar on the legacy of sanctions in Syria. On December 8, 2024, Bashar Al-Assad fled Syria, bringing an end to the 13-year civil war that had devastated the country. Syrians who had endured years of conflict and deprivation, took to the streets in celebration. They were suddenly able to imagine a new future for their country. Assad’s fall caught the international community by surprise, and policymakers in the region, in Europe, and in the United States were forced to adjust their ...
• How to Get Off the Sanctions List 01.09.2025 47Min.

  Erich Ferrari on the inner workings of OFAC. There is a powerful office in the Treasury Department called the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC. You could argue that the officials in OFAC are the most powerful government functionaries in the world. They are the functionaries who sanction companies, organizations, and individuals, by adding these entities to a list called the Specially Designated Nationals List, or SDN List for short. Today, there are over 17,000 designated...
• Reporting from Sanctioned Countries 26.08.2025 54Min.

  Golnar Motevalli on her experiences reporting from sanctioned Iran. Covering sanctions is complicated. Editors commissioning reports from countries like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela mainly want stories that focus on security or political issues, but on the ground, economic disruptions are what everyone is talking about. Foreign correspondents based in sanctioned countries are not just reporting on economic disruptions, they are experiencing them first-hand, contending with volatile marke...
• How Sanctions are Spurring Chinese Innovation 18.08.2025 43Min.

  Kyle Chan on Chinese innovation in the face of sanctions and export controls. Over the past several years, the United States has escalated its use of sanctions and export controls in the context of growing strategic competition with China. A central goal has been to contain China’s rise in high-tech industries—especially semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and clean energy—by cutting off access to advanced technology. This approach reflects a bipartisan consensus in Washington that...
• How Sanctions Kill 11.08.2025 51Min.

  Francisco Rodríguez on the global death toll of sanctions. In the 1990s, UN sanctions imposed on Iraq led to a humanitarian crisis, with reports of a rapid increase in excess mortality, especially among children. In the early 2000s, policymakers responded to this crisis by vowing to use “smart sanctions” in the future, measures that would target elites while sparing civilians, thereby limiting the humanitarian harms of economic coercion. The perception that today’s sanctions are “smart”...