Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently visited the Group of Seven (G7) at the invitation of French president Emmanuel Macron, in what was seen as an overture to the Trump administration to negotiate over sanctions that have plagued the Iranian economy. Back in 2018, after months of increasingly hostile rhetoric, the US government withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or “Iran Deal,” and imposed a “maximum pressure” campaign that included unilateral, economy-wide sanctions. The Iran Deal was an agreement that provided Iran relief from existing sanctions in exchange for limits on its enrichment of uranium, among other concessions. These sanctions hampered trade between the European Union, whose leaders have sought to salvage the Iran Deal.

When President Trump reimposed sanctions in November 2018, it cut off Iran’s oil exports and access to the international financial system. At the time, he announced that Iran could either comply with new US demands or face “economic isolation.” Additional US sanctions imposed since then have specifically targeted a thousand individuals and entities with the goal of reducing Iran’s oil revenues to “zero.” More recently, Trump said that although “[Iran’s] economy is crashing . . .  it’s very easy to straighten [it] out, or it’s very easy for us to make it a lot worse.”

And so, according to Trump himself, the United States has the power to solve — or exacerbate — Iran’s current economic problems. What is left unsaid, including by much of the media, is that sanctions that “crash” the economy are an attack on the country’s civilian population and create widespread human misery. Indeed, they appear to be contributing to widespread shortages of medicine and medical equipment, particularly affecting cancer patients. In Venezuela, which is under a similar US sanctions regime, there have been similar effects, with more than 40,000 people estimated to have died from 2017 to 2018 due to the “collective punishment” inflicted on them.