This is a Kato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, October 31st, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown. The US has tightened sanctions on Iran in what many fear is a run-up to war over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

So what's the record of sanctions in compelling certain behavior?

Ted Galen Carpenter is a Cato Institute's Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies.

He says the record of unilateral sanctions is poor.

The ruling elites of Iran, he argues, will make sure that the nation's people will pay the

price of economic sanctions.

There's been a pervasive belief for several years that Iran is embarked on a quest to develop nuclear weapons.

The United States and the other members of the UN Security Council have demanded that Iran cease those activities and

specifically that Iran immediately halt its efforts to enrich uranium. That seems to be the sticking point the

Iranians have said they're willing to negotiate on its overall nuclear status,

but they are not willing to preemptively stop enriching uranium.

So this is at an impasse.

We've already had two rounds of economic sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council

and those supplement the unilateral sanctions that the United States had imposed on Iran following the Islamic

revolution in 1979. So we're now really at a third stage with the tightening of

unilateral US sanctions.

What is the record of unilateral sanctions in conflicts involving the US?

The record of unilateral sanctions is not a good one. The United States, for example, has maintained

a sanctions regime against Cuba for some four and a half decades and the last time I looked, unfortunately, Fidel Castro is still in power.

We had sanctions against Vietnam.

We've had sanctions against North Korea.

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