UN sanctions on Iran and their financial elements

Abstract

This chapter argues how UN financial sanctions worked in practice. Using the author’s experience of working as a member of the Panel of Experts, it describes the impact of asset freeze and its difficulty for implementation. It also takes many cases of circumvention of financial sanctions. Sanctions on Iran could not be successful without national sanctions, so it explains the effectiveness of US and EU sanctions and how they led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In conclusion, it argues that the dynamics of sanctions has changed completely when the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from JCPOA and re-imposed national sanctions, but they did not produce the desired result because they lacked legitimacy.