page_title: Sanctions against Iraq
section_title: Arguments about the sanctions and the Iraq War
hierarchical_section_title: Sanctions against Iraq / Controversies / Arguments about the sanctions and the Iraq War
caption_attribution_description: Picture of anti-Iraq-sanctions and anti-Iraq-invasion marchers. 2002 or 2003, Washington, DC.
context_page_description: The sanctions against Iraq were a near-total financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on Ba'athist Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 22, 2003, and persisted in part, including reparations to Kuwait, through the present. The original stated purposes of the sanctions were to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, to pay reparations, and to disclose and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction.
  Initially the UN Security Council imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iraq by adopting and enforcing United Nations Security Council Resolution 661. After the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, those sanctions were extended and elaborated on, including linkage to removal of weapons of mass destruction, by Resolution 687. The sanctions banned all trade and financial resources except for medicine and "in humanitarian circumstances" foodstuffs, the import of which into Iraq was tightly regulated.
  The effects of the sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq have been disputed.
context_section_description: Some persons, such as Walter Russell Mead, accepted a large estimate of casualties due to sanctions, but argued that invading Iraq was better than continuing the sanctions regime, since "Each year of containment is a new Gulf War."
  Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry, also argued that ending sanctions was one benefit of the war. Citing recent studies disproving any increase in childhood mortality in Iraq under the sanctions regime, Michael Spagat declared "this claim should now take up its rightful place in the historical record next to Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction."
  There were also arguments saying the sanctions had not been as effective as people had thought, due to reports of companies not following trade sanctions on Iraq during this time. One of those countries being France as shown in The Guardian, Washington Times  according to Bill Gertz, and New York Times  articles that they had been trading Iraq weapons, supplies and nuclear technology leading up to and some argue after the sanctions helping support the Iraq government. So overall the sanctions didn't help in the way it was intended or at least were not successful.
caption: Protesters in Washington DC against sanctions and invasion of Iraq, 2002 or 2003
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