On February 6th, 2025, the New York Post published an article titled “Trump admin sanctions ‘front company’ selling oil to China to allegedly fund Iranian military and terrorist groups.” The article demonstrates the procedures the Trump administration has imposed as sanctions targeting globally connected groups that sell millions of barrels of Iranian oil to China. Another report by Ribjar on February 13th reports on how Trump declared sanctions on Cuba just after a few hours of taking office.

The article shows how Trump intensified the sanctions against Iran and other countries. The Ribjar report approaches the topic of sanctions from a different angle. It argues that while the success of American political and economic sanctions is often loudly celebrated, we rarely pause to listen to those who suffer most under them—private citizens in countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea. These sanctions create a barrier not only to economic growth but also to the human connection, silencing the everyday common man and woman and marginalising their voices.

In the case of Venezuela, one can really notice the dreadful impacts of these sanctions on the lives of the people. In 2019, the Associated Press published an article on how the sanctions on Venezuelan oil, the lifeblood of the Venezuelan economy, had serious consequences on people’s capabilities and well-being, causing less and less chances for people to have skills and be part of the productive process of society as a whole. Some of the statistics and facts show that the imports and oil exports in Venezuela from 1998 to 2018 have long been utilized to support sectors of food, fuel, medical products, etc., according to the Washington Office on Latin America.

“[W]e have a societal problem about how to deal with this, but 90 percent of the population doesn’t even know there is anything to worry about…” is a quote Noam Chomsky starts his book Manufacturing Consent with. Chomsky’s characterization of the “general population” in Manufacturing Consent can be applied to the situation of ordinary citizens in sanction-imposed countries. While these people may not necessarily know about the complex political forces that result in sanctions, they feel their impact most acutely. In Chomsky’s line of reasoning, the population is usually unaware of the broader political forces at work. Likewise, the people of Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran are the ones who are subjected to sanctions against them without their direct participation or will.

Political “bodies” of governing regimes clash with one another in geopolitical disputes, but the “minds” of ordinary people are left to endure the suffering, at times with no means and awareness to defend or change themselves. These people must constantly adapt to the changing circumstances imposed by sanctions. We, the outsiders of these societies, may not listen to them, and they do not necessarily care because their awareness is focused on their reality and they exert great effort in trying to develop, adapt, and resist daily, even with simple weapons, the external sanctions.

Although our eyes are immersed in the celebrations of the hegemon and his sanctions, we do not notice the people’s success in creating their own power with any available means. More importantly, we also do not notice how people curl up in on themselves; we are unable to hear the voices within. This is nothing but a form of dehumanisation, which, over time, will create a dominant norm among those imposing sanctions and a norm of resistance among the people subjected to sanctions. As for the regimes against which the people are subjected to sanctions, they appear as if they continue to remain in power. This is what happened and continues to happen with the Iranian, Venezuelan, and Cuban regimes remaining as they are.

This is not the subject of this report, but rather the primary subject: people who do not destroy themselves simply by facing such crises, but rather seek and isolate themselves, while we are unable and demonstrate our inability to listen to them. Over time, we find that we do not know much about the important voices within these people, and we do not feel that such sanctions create centrality and marginality. A centrality that exerts the power of sanctions, but is full of gaps and a marginality full of meaning that we do not see because of all the obstacles in our way to reach these people.