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The United States has continued its collective punishment sanctions regimes (literal war crimes!) against countries like Venezuela and Iran despite the pandemic. Before the pandemic they were already resulting, as intended, in severe and deadly shortages of food and medicine.
Many countries targeted have public sector healthcare systems, meaning that any company that would sell medication and equipment to them would be dealing directly with the governments and could therefore face secondary sanctions themselves.
This "chilling effect" is how even sanctions that explicitly make exceptions for food and medicine result, quite predictably, in their shortage regardless. Even before the pandemic, these sanctions had caused severe upheaval and mass suffering in those countries. It's worse now.
In cases like Iran, sanctions are presented as a means to an end: ending the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Except that program ended in 2003. Their only point now is to try to foment revolutions against the government by crushing the people.
Not only is that a war crime under international law, and not only is it immoral, it also won't work. The Iranian people know sanctions are the cause of their suffering, they have seen US-backed regime change take place around the world. They don't want to be a US client state.
The United States created an incredibly desperate economic crisis in Venezuela and then attempted a military coup, but the people saw through it and did not allow it to succeed. The same thing happened, eventually, in Bolivia. The people are holding strong against US imperialism.
From Washington Bullets:
