The looming failure of Operation Economic Outcast

By Jeffrey D Sachs and Sybil FaresProfessor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. Advisor on the Middle East and Africa for UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.Published On 31 Aug 202631 Aug 2026SaveSharefacebookxwhatsapp-strokecopylinkUS Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks during a press conference to outline further sanctions against Iran, at the Treasury Department in Washington on August 24, 2026 [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]Last week, Pakistan announced that it will not comply with the latest sanctions the United States imposed on Iran and will continue trading with its neighbour. The news came just days after China made a similar statement.The sanctions announced by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on August 24 under “Operation Economic Outcast “ are supposed to be “the toughest sanctions in history” designed to impose “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world”.Earlier, President Donald Trump called it in a social media post “ECONOMIC D-DAY.” He promised “tremendous economic consequences” for any nation that extended Iran “any type of lifeline”.Six months of US bombing and naval blockade have produced no US victory, so the plan now is to starve Iran into capitulation. The new approach is illegal, cruel and will fail for several reasons.To begin with, there is the historical record. Economic sanctions do not bring down governments determined to survive them. Yes, sanctions can impoverish populations, empower the security services that control smuggling and hand the targeted nation a rallying point built on US malice. But they do not topple governments.Consider, as well, the basic arithmetic of the world oil market. Bessent proposes to remove Iranian oil exports from a world that has already lost a fifth of its oil supply because the Strait of Hormuz is shut. The US proposes to deepen a stagflationary shock already being borne by Europe, Japan, and its other allies, and orders those countries to enforce sanctions that will throttle their economies.Above all, the campaign is targeted against China, which buys more than 80 percent of Iran’s oil exports. If the US sanction the Bank of China or the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Beijing will not respond with a mild diplomatic note. It will restrict its rare earth exports, because it has already run this experiment once and won.In April 2025, China imposed export licensing on heavy rare earths in response to Trump’s tarrifs and within weeks American and European automakers were idling assembly lines for want of rare-earth magnets. In October 2025, China announced a far more sweeping package and Washington folded, agreeing to pull back its own newly expanded restrictions on Chinese companies in exchange for a suspension of Beijing’s measures for a period of one year.The April controls have never been lifted and the suspension of the October measures ends in November. So Bessent has chosen this moment, just over two months before China’s expanded rare earth regime returns and weeks before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is due for a visit in Washington, to inform Beijing that it is either with the US or against it. This is a trap for the US of its own making.Beijing has made its position clear. “China has made clear on many occasions its firm opposition to illicit unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law or the authorisation of the UN Security Council. Economic warfare and maximum pressure provide no solution,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian told journalists.It is not just the opinion of the Chinese government that the US sanctions are illicit. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The US repudiation of the UN Charter goes far beyond Iran.Of all 193 UN member states, America is now the country least aligned with UN-based multilateralism. In January 2026, Washington withdrew from more than 60 international organisations. In 2025, it voted with the international majority in just five percent of recorded UNGA resolutions.At this point, every government should draw three conclusions. First, the US has repudiated the UN Charter. Second, American security assurances are unreliable. Third, relying on dollar-based trade leaves states vulnerable to US sanctions.Around the world, countries are turning to new defence arrangements, such as the Mecca Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan. They are also predictably moving away from settlements in US dollars and reducing their holdings of US treasury debt in their foreign reserves. They are also turning to China’s open-weight AI models to meet AI needs instead of paying for American proprietary models.Thucydides’ ancient account of the Peloponnesian War is being read in our day as a mirror of the US–China rivalry. Its most famous line is the taunt Athenian generals gave to the people of Melos in 416 BC, that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Yet just a dozen years after the Athenian generals made their taunts, it was Athens that was defeated by Sparta.The US now taunts Iran and other countries in the same tone. Pride goeth before the fall and no government today is more arrogant than the US under Trump and his enforcer Bessent.Governments around the world will not follow the US blindly into disaster.The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.