When faced with the agreement between companies in France, Russia and Malaysia to invest in the South Pars oil field in Iran, rather than impose sanctions, we used the Act s waiver authority to help consolidate the gains that we have made with the EU and Russia on strengthening international cooperation to oppose Iran s dangerous and objectionable behav-ior and laid the foundation for further progress in this vital area. That decision has enhanced our ability to work with the Europeans, Russia, and Malaysia on bilateral and multilateral concerns such as those to which I just referred. It has helped us avoid a major dispute with allies and friends which could have led to trade retaliation and reduced co-operation on weapons of mass destruction and other efforts. In stark contrast, a decision to sanction would have undermined our efforts at multilateral and bilateral cooperation on limiting Iran s ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction and would not have stopped the South Pars deal. Notwithstanding these two examples, however, the history of our use of unilateral sanctions very clearly shows that, in the vast majority of cases, unilateral sanctions fail to change the conduct of the targeted country or, at best, will be a contributory but probably not a decisive factor in securing the changes of behavior or policy that we seek.
Sanctions take time to work.
They may exact significant costs on other US interests. Indeed, the first and primary principle which must guide our unilateral economic sanctions policy is whether sanctions will be effective in achieving their desired result of changing the conduct of the target country. Used at the wrong time and in the wrong ways, sanctions can actually impede and undermine the attainment of US policy objectives. Sanctions that are ineffective, that impose substantially more costs on US interests than on the sanctioned country, and that are unable to garner broad support even among our closest allies do not send a message of US resolve or US commitment. Rather they send a message of US irrelevance.