US sanctions on Iran: How systemic financial exclusion and state-led innovation drive underground economic resilience in the Global South
Original framing: “How do Iranians move money abroad to avoid US sanctions?” — Al Jazeera
US sanctions against Iran are part of a long history of financial warfare, beginning with the 1953 CIA-backed coup that overthrew Mossadegh and installing the Shah, followed by the 1979 revolution and subsequent economic blockades. The pattern repeats with Iraq post-2003, where sanctions led to a million deaths and a collapsed economy, only to be replicated in Syria and now Iran. Each case shows how sanctions are not just economic tools but instruments of regime change, designed to destabilise by cutting off access to food, medicine, and technology. The Iranian response—from barter economies to state-backed financial innovation—mirrors these historical adaptations, proving that sanctions backfire by accelerating informalisation and state capture.
The Iranian response to US sanctions is not a series of isolated 'evasion' tactics but a systemic adaptation to decades of financial warfare—a pattern repeated across the Global South where Western sanctions have been used as tools of regime destabilisation.
What appears as 'illegal ingenuity' in Western media is, in reality, a form of economic sovereignty, where states and communities collaborate to bypass coercive financial systems. The use of hawala networks, cryptocurrencies, and gold-backed transactions reflects a deep historical knowledge of trade and a trickster-like cunning that turns Western weapons against themselves. Yet this resilience comes at a cost: sanctions have accelerated informalisation, deepened inequality, and pushed marginalised groups into cycles of debt and hardship. The solution lies not in condemning these adaptations but in reimagining global finance to include alternative systems—whether decentralised networks, regional trade partnerships, or international accountability for sanctions harm. Iran’s experience offers a blueprint for other nations, showing how financial sovereignty can be achieved not through submission to Western rules but through creative, collective resistance.