By Professor Abdullahi Danladi
More than fourteen centuries ago, when the Quraysh of Makkah failed to persuade the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) to abandon his mission, they resorted to another weapon: economic and social isolation. Banu Hashim and those who stood with the Prophet were subjected to a severe boycott. Trade was restricted, marriage relations were cut off and normal social interaction was suspended. For nearly three years, they endured the hardship of Shi'b Abi Talib.
The message was brutally simple: abandon Muhammad and his message, or pay the price.
Today, the instruments are vastly different. The tribal boycott has been replaced by banking restrictions, financial sanctions, aviation controls, restrictions on fuel and threats of secondary sanctions against companies and countries that continue certain dealings with Iran. The United States possesses extraordinary leverage because of the central role of the dollar and American-controlled elements of the international financial system. Washington's latest measures are explicitly designed to increase the pressure not only on Iran but also on foreign entities that provide financial or logistical support to its sanctioned sectors.
But this brings us to a question that deserves more than a political slogan:
What makes America believe that this time the will of the Iranian people will be broken?
Iran has lived under successive layers of American sanctions and international economic pressure since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The United States itself acknowledges that its restrictions on Iran date back to that period. Yet, despite the enormous economic costs, sanctions have not brought Iran's scientific and technological life to a standstill.
Iranian scientists have continued to publish research and work in areas ranging from medicine and biotechnology to nanotechnology and other advanced sciences. Nature has documented both the severe obstacles sanctions create for Iranian researchers and the determination of Iranian scientists to continue their scientific work despite those obstacles. The World Bank likewise notes that Iran has adapted economically to sanctions by diversifying trade, increasing processing of domestic resources and developing alternative payment arrangements.
This does not mean that sanctions have failed to hurt Iran. They have imposed serious economic pressure, contributed to inflation and reduced purchasing power, while researchers and patients have faced difficulties obtaining equipment, medicines and other essential goods.
But that is precisely what makes the question more intriguing.
If decades of pressure have imposed enormous costs without eliminating Iran's capacity to develop its scientific institutions, maintain industrial activity and adapt its economy, what is different about the present strategy that would make Washington expect a fundamentally different political outcome?
Perhaps the answer lies in the assumption that enough economic pain will eventually translate into political submission. But history warns us that economic pressure and political surrender are not synonymous.
The Quraysh discovered this in Shi'b Abi Talib.
They could create hunger. They could restrict trade. They could isolate a community. But they could not command conviction.
The circumstances, of course, are not identical. America and Quraysh are not historically interchangeable actors, and the reasons advanced for the respective measures are entirely different. A serious comparison must acknowledge these differences.
Yet the underlying question remains remarkably familiar:
Can economic pressure compel a people to surrender what they regard as a fundamental principle?
The experience of Iran suggests another possibility: that prolonged external pressure can also stimulate adaptation, self-reliance and the search for alternative partners and technologies. Indeed, the history of Iranian science under sanctions presents a paradox: the very restrictions intended to constrain development can also create an incentive to develop domestic capabilities. Nature has described Iranian researchers as continuing their scientific work despite decades of sanctions, even while documenting the real damage that isolation causes to laboratories and international collaboration.
And so we return to Shi'b Abi Talib.
The technology of economic siege has changed dramatically. The caravans of Makkah have become global supply chains; tribal commercial restrictions have become financial regulations; the boycott has become a sophisticated international sanctions architecture.
But the fundamental question has not changed.
When persuasion fails, does power seek to defeat an argument—or make the cost of holding that argument unbearable?
And when economic pressure becomes a weapon, who ultimately pays the price? The government being targeted—or ordinary people living under its shadow?
Perhaps, therefore, the most interesting question facing America today is not whether it possesses the economic power to hurt Iran. Clearly, it does.
The deeper question is whether the ability to inflict economic pain should be confused with the ability to break the will of a nation.
Quraysh possessed the power to impose a boycott. They discovered that possessing the power to cause suffering was not the same thing as possessing the power to determine the destiny of a conviction.
Fourteen centuries later, the instruments have changed.
The question remains: will economic siege produce surrender—or simply test the depth of resistance?
A nation that depends on Allah can never be defeated.
No comments:
Post a Comment