'As deadly as war’: Iran says US sanctions kill 500,000 people a year, mostly children

Iran's Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on Wednesday that Western governments falsely portray sanctions as a ‘bloodless alternative to war’. He accused the US of committing crimes against humanity. Citing a Lancet study, he said the US sanctions have unilaterally killed 500,000 people every year since 1970. He called the Western sanctions 'inhumane' and called for a collective effort between the sanctioned nations for a unified response.

“Western regimes have long claimed that sanctions are a bloodless alternative to war. Reality check: New study by @TheLancet says unilateral sanctions, particularly by the US, may be as lethal as war. 500+k lives claimed annually since 1970s, mostly children and the elderly,” said Seyed Abbas Araghchi.

The Lancet study, funded by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, conducted cross-national panel data analysis between age-specific mortality rates and 152 countries sanctioned between 1971 and 2021, applying a wide range of methods such as observational data, entropy balancing, Granger causality, event-study representations, and instrumental variables to form a causal relationship. The findings suggest that sanctions have similar impacts to war. It also suggests rethinking the foreign policy tools, highlighting the importance of exercising restraint in their use and seriously considering efforts to reform their design.

Use of Economic sanctions has grown substantially, according to the Global Sanctions Database 25 per cent of all countries are subjected to sanctions either by the US or the EU or the UN between 2010-22, as compared to 8 per cent of 1970. As of August 2025, the US or the EU or the UN have sanctions over Brazil, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Russia and its oil buyers such as India and China, as well as Syria and Libya to some extent are under either sanctions or a heavy tariff burden. There are other kinds like the FATF blacklist, Shadow Fleet, Terrorism, and Human rights related sanctions, which encompass a complex web of global sanctions.