A study first published by the British medical journal The Lancet in September 2025, and then republished in October 2025 with corrections, found that Western sanctions are as deadly as wars in targeted countries. The study came to the attention of EIR only this week, but it is of great relevance regarding the Trump Administration’s economic warfare against Iran and other countries. “Our findings showed a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. We found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas we found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions,” the study’s authors wrote. They continued further on, “We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564,258 deaths, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.”

“Sanctions can lead to reductions in the quantity and quality of public health provision driven by sanctions-induced declines in public revenues; decreased availability of essential imports, resulting from sanctions-induced reductions in foreign exchange earnings, which limit access to medical supplies, food, and other crucial goods; and constraints on humanitarian organisations, through real or perceived sanctions-induced barriers that hinder their ability to operate effectively in target countries,” the study reports further. “Concern with the humanitarian effect of conventional cross-cutting sanctions regimes has prompted numerous reform initiatives over the years.

“Despite these initiatives, the use of economic sanctions has grown substantially in recent decades. According to calculations made using the Global Sanctions Database (GSDB), 25% of all countries were subject to some type of sanctions by either the USA, the EU, or the UN in the 2010–22 period, by contrast with an average of only 8% in the 1960s.

“This increase is driven by the growth of sanctions that have the claimed aim to end wars, protect human rights, or promote democracy,” it adds. They add later that “The fraction of the world’s economy subject to unilateral sanctions, for example, has grown from 5.4% in the 1960s to 24.7% in the 2010–22 period.”