At the Munich Security Conference, during an interview , Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic Speaker of the House and current California Democratic representative, sadistically boasted that sanctions on Iran are designed to “cripple their economy” and make civilians in “rural areas” feel the pain”.
When asked “Is there a way to bring about the regime falling without using American force” Pelosi boasted, “Use economic force, there are ways that you can cripple their economy and some of that has been in the works” adding, “It’s more about just weaken their economy and it weakens the support they do have, because they do have support in the rural areas in the more conservative Imams and the rest of that, but we have to make them feel the pain as well.”
These sadistic comments mirror similar comments made by current Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who boasted, “What we can do at treasury, and what we have done, is created a dollar shortage in the country, at a speech at the Economic club in New York in March I outlined the strategy, it came to a swift -and I would say grand- culmination in December when one of the largest banks in Iran went under, there was a run in the bank, the central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street.”
Bessent previously boasted :
If you look at a speech I gave at the economic club of New York last March, I said that I believe the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse, that if I were an Iranain citizen, I would take my money out.
President Trump ordered treasury and our OFAC division, (Office of Foreign Asset Control) to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked because in December, their economy collapsed, we saw a major bank go under, the central bank has started to print money, there is a dollar shortage, they are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the streets.
This is economic statecraft, no shots fired, and things are moving in a very positive way here
Through these admissions, Pelosi and Bessent are saying the quiet part out loud about U.S. sanctions: that they are done to inflict suffering on the civilian population of the targeted country in hopes it will lead to regime change.
Sanctions are often presented as a diplomatic alternative to war, but a recent study published in the Lancet medical journal by economists Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot documented that “Sanctions have substantial adverse effects on public health, with a death toll similar to that of wars” adding, “Over the past decade, we estimate that unilateral sanctions caused around 560,000 annual deaths worldwide.”
They noted, “It is hard to think of other policy interventions with such adverse effects on human life that continue to be pervasively used”.
In the case of Iran, Pelosi and Bessent are not the only U.S. officials who have admitted the intention of sanctions is to inflict economic misery on the civilian population in hopes it will force them to rise up and enact regime change.
Richard Nephew, the deputy coordinator of sanctions for the Obama administration, boasted in his disturbing book “The Art of Sanctions” that because of U.S. sanctions on Iran, “Iran’s economy went from GDP growth of 3 percent to a 6.6 percent contraction between 2011 and 2012 . Iranian unemployment and inflation remained in the double digits. In 2012, Iran’s currency depreciated threefold in a matter of weeks, resulting in the hemorrhaging of Iranian hard-currency reserves”.
Nephew boasted that while he was at the State Department, U.S. sanctions caused unemployment in Iran, while the State Department ran propaganda campaigns encouraging an uprising against the government, writing:
The United States took its surgical sanctions approach a step further in June 2013 with a carefully structured set of sanctions on Iran’s automotive sector, denying Iran the ability to import manufacturing assistance but not spare parts for existing autos or whole cars themselves. Iranian manufacturing jobs and export revenue were the targets of this sanction, undermining the Iranian government’s attempt to find non-oil export sectors and ways of employing 500,000 Iranians.
All the while, the United States expanded the ability of U.S. and foreign companies to sell Iranians technology used for personal communications, helping ensure that the Iranian public had the ability to learn more about the dire straits of their country’s economy and to communicate with one another.
Nephew added, “With Iran’s population technically able to purchase such goods and imports still flowing in, but with the exchange rate depriving most people of the practical benefit of being able to purchase these goods, only the wealthy or those in positions of power could take advantage of Iran’s continued connected- ness. Hard currency streamed out of the country while luxuries streamed in, and stories began to emerge from Iran of intensified income inequality and inflation . This was a choice, a decision made on the basis of helping to drive up the pressure on the Iranian government from internal sources.”
Similarly, in 2018, when Trump reinstated the “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran, his then Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, boasted , “Things are much worse for the Iranian people [with the US sanctions], and we are convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime”.
Similarly, Trump’s Iran envoy during his first term, Elliott Abrams, boasted , “At the end of Trump’s term, Iran was facing bankruptcy. If Trump had received four more years, the regime would have faced a choice between economic collapse and mass uprising, or halting the nuclear program,” in reference to U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Nancy Pelosi’s sadistic admission is the latest in a long list of admissions from U.S. officials that sanctions on Iran are designed to make civilians “feel the pain”, in hopes it will force them to rise up and enact regime change.
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The only regime change needed is to get rid of everyone funding genocide!
Probably authority figures in the Iranian gov't should just broadcast her interview (have a translation of it as well), what she said, nationwide, on their form of national news, and then they would all realize (assuming that not everyone there already does... which they most likely do) that the U.S. is behind all their economic distress/issues.
I would think there's almost no better way to build national unity than pointing out, explaining, what is really happening to them, and why, and who's really behind it.