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The Sanctions Age
The Sanctions Age is a podcast that explores how sanctions are changing the world.
Twenty years ago, the U.S. Department of Treasury had imposed sanctions on fewer than 1,000 companies and individuals. Today, more than 10,000 entities have been targeted.
Leaders around the world are imposing sanctions in response to wars, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, human rights violations, and technological competition. As a result, a growing list of countries are targeted by sanctions, export controls, and investment restrictions, including China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Syria.
The Sanctions Age invites the people who understand sanctions best—economists, historians, lawyers, policymakers, and journalists—to explain their use and significance. Understanding sanctions is the key to understanding politics and economics today.
We are living in The Sanctions Age.
The Sanctions Age
Latest Episodes
Why the U.S. and Iran are Struggling to Reach a Deal
Ali Vaez on the fraught negotiations between Washington and Tehran. In late February, the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran—a war that killed the country’s supreme leader, closed the Strait of Hormuz, pushed the...
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Cuba's Unprecedented Crisis
María José Espinosa on the unprecedented crisis in Cuba.For more than sixty years, the United States has waged an economic war against Cuba. The sanctions first imposed in 1960 were designed, in the words of a secret State Departm...
How to Fight an Economic War
Edward Fishman on how to fight an economic war.It has been an extraordinary year in American economic statecraft and economic warfare. When today’s guest last appeared on the show, it was April 2025. We spoke just days after Trump...
Studying Sanctions Through a Feminist Lens
Lisa Neal on understanding sanctions as a form of structural violence.Debates about sanctions tend to follow a familiar script. Who is being targeted? Will the measures change behavior? What are the economic costs to the sender co...
Germany’s Vulnerability in the Geoeconomic 'Zeitenwende'
Sascha Lohmann on the impact of tariffs and sanctions on the German economy.Since the end of the Second World War, the world economy has operated on a set of shared assumptions: trade is mutually beneficial, interdependence engend...