U.s Sanctions On Iran And The Iranian Economy

The United States history during 1977 to 1989 went through two presidencies and whirlwind of events happened. When President Jimmy Carter became president he wanted to lower the inflation rates to make life easier for the people of the United States. While that was his goal it got completely derailed. Near the end of Jimmy Carters presidency, a group of Iranian students took over the U.S Embassy in Tehran and took people hostage. Over the course of the 444 days the hostages where held captive while the people of the United States voted for a new president to help lead them into a new direction. The people voted for Ronald Reagan. While he was president things didn’t go as he planned as well. The issues with Iran did not calm down and escalated to something bigger. After the Iran hostage crisis, the US had another issues with Iran and it was the Iran- Contra affair. During this essay I will be talking about the book called “Taken Hostage” by David Farber and the information in the book. The book is about the time frame of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and the issues with Iran and the hostage crisis. The second half of my essay is towards President Ronald Reagan’s and the issues about the Iran- Contra affair and the lasting issues between Iran and the United states.

The American public was so captivated by the Iran Hostage Crisis because they were blindsided by this radical action and their knowledge of America’s involvement in Iran was limited. The media played a major role in influencing their emotions and they already had trouble trusting the American government. This unknown involvement began in 1943 when President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met in Tehran to discuss how to remove the British and Soviet military forces from Iran because Iran wanted to be its own nation. The United States aided the young Shah, the ruler of Iran, and his government with military weapons and loans. Over time, Prime Minister Mossadegh, of Iran, gained more and more power until he was the true ruler of Iran and the Shah was just a figurehead. The United States, fearing the spread of communism, devised a secret plan for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to over throw Prime Minister Mossadegh.

The complexity of America’s relationship with Iran increased steadily beginning in 1908, when Iran struck oil. The Shah, the king or emperor of Iran, after taking the place of his young predecessor Reza Shah Pahlavi with the help of the CIA, led Iran into a period of extreme wealth and prosperity, the likes of which the Iranian people had never experienced. However, with the growth of wealth in Iran came the growth of Iranian resentment towards the West, specifically the United States. The Iranian’s resented the uneven distribution of wealth that they felt existed and the United State’s influence in “westernizing” their society. In 1963, this growing hatred led to a conflict with the Islamic clergy. The conflict was quickly settled by the Shah, but he was unaware that this dispute was the beginning

For most Americans, the story begins in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis, when a group of revolutionary university students took over the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and held 52 American diplomats, intelligence officers and Marines hostage for 444 days. But for most Iranians, and to fully understand the repercussions of this aforementioned event, the story begins almost three decades prior, in 1953. This was the year that the United States overthrew the recently established democracy in Iran, led by Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. He had become very popular in the country for having the ambition to finally take advantage of the wealth that Iran needed to grow

President Carter, like other presidents before him, had concentrated mostly on the Soviet Union. This was caused by the Cold War and the tensions that arose from it. Therefore the US’s main attention had been directed away from the Middle East. Since Iran was anti-communist then “the United States supported any regime that was not communist” (Bechtel 2). There was more of a reason for the president to focus on the Soviets than the Iranians, but he “did not ignore Iran during this period but it was not perceived as a hot spot ”(Farber 80). The main situation the US faced with Iran was the issue over oil and even when discussing the ownership over oil fields, there was never a moment where hostages were involved. The United States had made "innumerable pleas, resolutions, declarations, special missions, and even sanctions" to try and return the hostages safely back home (Ismail). Such extents even included sending eight helicopters to rescue the hostages. “Three out of the eight were damaged in the sandstorm, the mission was aborted”, and the death of the eight persons caused the Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance to resign even though he opposed the mission to begin with (“Iran Hostage Crisis”). The President had to be prepared to attack if any of the hostages were harmed. There were three things that were first sought out when realizing what had happened overseas in Iran. First,

This paper will seek to identify three key aspects of US sanctions imposed on Iran. First the paper will briefly introduce the reasons as to why US and Iran relations have worsened since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Secondly, this paper shall outline some of the key sanctions imposed on Iran which have influenced Irans’s behaviour. After sanctions are reviewed, the paper will then summarise the impact of sanctions on Iran. Last but not the least and most importantly, the paper will elaborate how Iran is resisting stringent US sanctions. This paper will argue that despite punitive measures adopted by the US, Iran has found alternative mechanisms to fight them and has reoriented its

Although the Iranian hostage crisis started in 1979 the event which led to the crisis began in 1951. In 1951 the prime minister of Iran, Muhammad Mosssadegh, established a plan to nationalize oil

The US government tried to negotiate, rescue and embargo Iran for the hostages taken under Carters administration. They were released when Reagan was elected. He dealt from a position of power and the Iranians respected that.

During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, from 1977 to 1981, the Iran hostage crisis took place. In 1979, young Islamic revolutionaries took more than 60 Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The built up tensions were due the oil interest from western countries especially America after 1953. After the United States feared that the Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh would be getting closer to Moscow, the United States, or more specifically the CIA, overthrew him and put the Shah in his place. The Shah tried using his powers to start economic and social reforms to transform and westernize Iran. There was much disagreement and conflict with Iranian citizens due to the westernizing influence, and an uneven distribution of wealth after 1963.

A regime change in Iran could see the lifting of American trade sanctions against Iran; U.S. sanctions have had an impact on Iran’s oil economy. Mohammed Akacem, a petroleum expert at Metropolitan State College of Denver said, “U.S. oil companies would love to go to Iran, so sanctions have retarded a little bit of Iran’s ability to improve its oil sector (qtd. in Beehner).” Securing another efficient source of oil would help to ease the American economy as alternative energy sources are developed, and workers are trained to perform the

Since the early 1900s the United States has been embroiled in Iranian affairs, something that would have great effects both in 1979 and now. The United States’ interest in Iran was originally spurred by the discovery of oil, but due to the Cold War U.S. interest in Iran grew even more for strategic reasons. To continue to exert their influence in Iran, the United States, through the CIA, installed shah Pahlavi as ruler. The shah was a cruel and strict dictator and was eventually overthrown and exiled. In place of the shah, an Islamic Republic came to power under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Back in 1950, when Mossadegh was Prime Minister of Iran, he nationalized Iran 's oil industry, reducing the European influence throughout the nation over the oil commodity. This sparked great fear throughout the United States; they feared the communists would turn the Iran democracy against them. After three years in exile, in 1953 Shah Mohammed

backed coup, his relationship to the U.S. became an even greater source of disapproval with the Iranian people. Many Iranian began to echo the thoughts of the exiled Khomeini, who preached that that reliance on the U.S. or any other foreign nation was devastating Iran. He pointed to the benefits the British and the Americans were getting from Iranian oil while thousands of people were dying because of the Shah. For several decades the U.S. would support the Shah’s economic development and regional leadership plans. These plans would be paid for fully by exporting the country’s enormous oil wealth. The Shah would use also billions of dollars from the exporting of his oil reserves to purchase modern and more deadly weapons developed within the United States. Weapons he would use on his own people and as a deterrent for other nations to become involved in Iranian

The sanctions center around the country’s ballistic missile program has also claimed human rights abuses and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC). The new law says the IRGC plays a large role in Iran’s international destabilization program, including terrorism and the ballistic missile program. The sanctions include the blocking property, exclusion from entering the US and pausing current transactions. However the Iranian government has accused the United States of Using the Sanctions to undermine the current nuclear deal. “President Trump has long criticized the agreement and vowed to pull the country out of it during his election campaign.”(CNN). Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi warned that “hostile” measures taken by the US would impact international relations and affairs.

Once the Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown and the country perceived to be taken over by Islamic extremists, the West began researching the development process to make sure the wrong weapons would not fall into the wrong hands, but the capital Tehran encouraged the fact that it was strictly for peaceful purposes. Lies and deceit possessed the rest of the negotiations as both sides tried to get straight answers to understand what was actually going on in the nuclear program, but nevertheless those answers were never found as they were clouded by a long standing hatred between certain Islamic groups and the Western world(). More recently, ten years ago the International Atomic Energy Agency sent agents to inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities and they found trace amounts of enriched uranium at a factory in Natanz, which led to a three-year halt on Iran’s uranium enrichment. After those three years, the enrichment process resumed and the U.N. Security Council responded in 2006 by placing sanctions upon the country’s economy in an effort to curb any further nuclear development. These sanctions, which include a ban on purchasing Iranian oil, a ban on certain Iranians from traveling outside of the country, and a ban on deals with financial institutions from the country, severely crippled Iran’s economy forcing their oil revenue to collapse and creating an almost absurd amount of inflation. Despite this, uranium enrichment has not slowed down for the Iranians as the