Canada drops gloves in scrap with Iran!

Oh lookee, a hockey reference! How Canadian!

And how Canadian of the John Baird fan club at Post Media to portray these latest sanctions as a bold poke in the eye against the "most feared and powerful" Revolutionary Guards. I was sure the next sentence would inform me that Canada is "punching above its weight" again, but apparently that trope is being held back for the next round of anti-Iranian propaganda.

While all concerned can take comfort in the fact that Canadian pronouncements in general don't mean much to anyone, the ease with which we allow our politicians to make them should give us pause.

While Canada is very much a me-too nation, and a nonentity in world affairs, why do we so glibly sign on to these sanction regimens? Does anyone in Baird's department or in the government at large or at Post Media think that these latest sanctions or the round before or the round before that have any impact on the Revolutionary Guards?

Here's an article by Jeff Nygaard that explores just a few of the effects of Western sanctions. Sanctions mean ordinary people will be denied food and medicine. They have no effect on the elite.

We shouldn't be surprised that sanctions don't work. Did 60 years of sanctions hurt Castro? Did ten years of sanctions hurt Saddam?

There is a Machiavellian calculus at work in the minds of the bullies who impose sanctions. "If we squeeze hard enough, eventually the people will rise up and topple the leadership we don't like." That's the thinking behind the Gaza blockade, behind Syria sanctions, behind Iran sanctions, behind sanctions generally.

It is a strategy with a half century of history to prove it is doomed to fail.

But let's just give it another try...