What Sanctions Get Right

Foreign Affairs | S. C. M. Paine, Anand Toprani

United States foreign policy frequently relies on economic sanctions to constrain adversary states before transitioning to direct military interventions. Washington applied decade-long economic embargoes against Iraq prior to its 2003 invasion, and pursued similar sanctions against Tehran before initiating war with Iran in February 2026. Structural reliance on financial isolation reflects a recurring executive expectation that trade restrictions can substitute for kinetic force or compel major diplomatic concessions.

Sanctions rarely force immediate regime collapse on their own. When target states absorb financial strain through sanctions evasion, political dissatisfaction with incomplete economic outcomes routinely accelerates the resort to military action. Assessing coercive economic tools exclusively by whether they overthrow hostile governments misinterprets their actual utility as mechanisms for long-term capability degradation. Treating sanctions as all-or-nothing political solutions obscures how trade restrictions degrade state war-making capacity over extended strategic horizons while shaping the operational battlefield environment.

Comment

Evaluating economic coercion against target states creates distinct intelligence gaps when collection prioritises immediate political compliance over structural industrial decay. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, United States intelligence assessments misjudged the operational state of Iraqi military infrastructure because ongoing sanctions obscured cumulative supply chain collapse. Similarly, monitoring Iranian sanctions evasion under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action framework required persistent maritime surveillance of covert ship-to-ship oil transfers near the Strait of Malacca rather than standard force-posture tracking.

This collection challenge stems from the specific operational mechanics of illicit trade networks, where target regimes obfuscate ownership through layered front companies across foreign jurisdictions. Tracking these covert financial flows forces intelligence agencies to divert signals intelligence collection away from tactical military formations toward global banking clearinghouses like SWIFT. Consequently, tracking Iranian front companies in Dubai demands persistent monitoring of international messaging networks rather than traditional order-of-battle surveillance.

Strategic Question for Discussion

How does the redirection of signals intelligence assets toward tracking financial networks like SWIFT alter an intelligence service's readiness to detect sudden tactical force movements prior to hostilities?

Prioritising financial intelligence collection provides deep visibility into an adversary's long-term industrial attrition but creates potential blind spots regarding immediate operational intent. The available evidence points toward a strategic trade-off, where monitoring trade evasion illuminates economic decay without reliably predicting when leadership will choose armed conflict over continued isolation. Consequently, balancing financial monitoring against traditional tactical surveillance remains a central friction in pre-conflict collection allocation.

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