Welcome to pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. As the Trump administration mobilizes to stop the COVID-19 pandemic at home, its actions overseas are having the opposite impact.

U.S. sanctions on countries including Venezuela and Iran are hurting those countries' ability to fight the pandemic.

Just this week, the Trump administration ramped up its actions against Iran announcing

a whole new round of sanctions.

Well, joining me now is someone who knows the impact of sanctions very well.

Alfred Desaias is a former UN Special Rapporteur who has studied the impact of sanctions on countries overseas,

including Venezuela. Professor DeZias, welcome to pushback.

Thank you for inviting me.

So what is your response to seeing in the midst of this pandemic the Trump administration

announcing new sanctions on Iran?

Well, it's insane, but it's also a crime against humanity.

And it might even be a form of genocide, depending on the number of victims that will be

generated directly through these sanctions. In my six years as UN rapporteur, I wrote about sanctions in several of my reports.

So did my colleague, the late Ambassador Idris Yazhairi, who passed away on the 27th of February

of this year.

In any event, he was a rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, and he was very clear

in analyzing the sanctions against Venezuela, the sanctions against Iran and Syria, et cetera.

Now, it's quite clear that unilateral course of measures are contrary to the United Nations

Charter.

They're contrary to customary international law, to very fundamental principles of international

laws such as freedom of trade and freedom of navigation,

etc. Now in a situation like COVID-19, what the world needs, of course, we're all on this

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