تحریم

This research paper aims to examine how changes in Iran's industrial exports, specifically the Untapped Export Potential (UEP), affect the employment level. We analyzed the data from 120 industrial activities in Iran spanning the years 2002 to 2020 and then categorized them according to the four-digit ISIC Rev. and four codes. Previous studies mentioned in the existing literature have primarily focused on the impact of the realized exports on employment. However, this article adopts a different approach by introducing the concept of Untapped Export Potential and exploring its influence on the employment-trade relationship. The UEP concept refers to the potential volume of exports between Iran and its trading partners.

To account for the autoregressive nature of employment over consecutive years, we employ a dynamic labor demand regression model. In this model, the main control determinants of the outcome of interest are production, wages, research and development (R&D) costs, imports and, particularly, the Untapped Export Potential (UEP). We anticipate that employment will be positively influenced by the lagged employment level, value added of activities, R&D costs, and imports. On the other hand, we expect employment to be negatively affected by wages and the UEP.

First, we conducted an Im-Pesaran-Shin (IPS) test to check for the presence of unit roots in the panel time series. Once the presence of unit roots was proved, we proceeded to estimate dynamic panel regressions. The estimated parameters exhibited statistical significance, and their signs aligned with the expected theoretical outcomes. The expansion of imports was found to have a positive impact on industrial employment; there was a 0.025% increase observed. Additionally, a one percent increase in value added by industrial activities would lead to a 0.37% increase in employment. Although the effect was smaller, an increase in R&D costs still had a significant impact on industrial employment, with a 0.037% increase observed. On the other hand, an increase in paid wages had a negative effect on labor demand. Specifically, a one-unit increase in wages would result in a 0.15% decrease in employment. Regarding the UEP, the results demonstrated its inverse effects on Iran's industrial employment. On average, each unit increase in the use of UEP corresponded to a 0.004% decrease in industrial employment. However, it is to be noted that the effect on employment was not evenly distributed among industries.

Conclusions and policy implications: 

In light of the declining trend in Iran's exports, it is crucial for policymakers to facilitate international trade, particularly exports. Considering that the use of UEP and an increase in imports have positive effects on the country's industrial employment, expanding foreign trade will not a threat to industrial employment in Iran; rather, it contributes to its improvement. Furthermore, to enhance Iran's position in the global arena, significant political decisions must be made regarding the country's international relations. The calculation of potential export volumes based on the current state of Iran's manufacturing industries does not indicate a favorable situation. Many of these industries heavily rely on oil production and contribute significantly to carbon pollution, which not only worsens the country's climate but also has potential international consequences in the future. Moreover, the continued production of such products with low-quality technology can lead to a decline in the country's overall production capacity. To address these challenges, it is essential for Iran to focus on increasing its industrial production capacity with medium and high technologies. This requires creating conditions to attract foreign direct investment, technology transfer, efficient utilization of skilled labor and new tools, all of which depend on establishing internal peace and security and correcting perceptions of stability among the local population, immigrants, and foreigners.

The realization of foreign direct investment in the form of joint venture contracts, with many benefits for the host country, requires the necessary alignment between two economies (the country of origin and host) with different characteristics. According to the theoretical literature, it is expected that the sanction of the host country as a factor of increasing risk and uncertainty has a positive effect on attracting foreign investment in the form of joint ventures, but its effect can be decreased by factors such as the weakness of the legal infrastructure and transparent legal procedures of the host country. In the present study, an appropriate framework is investigated for attracting foreign direct investment based on partnership with local investors under the conditions of Iran’s industry sanction. This study was done using the Bayesian vector autoregression  (BVAR) model. Based on the results of this study, a substantial difference in the investment behavior of the developed countries' subsidiary companies and the subsidiaries companies and individuals of the developing countries in the region is evident. According to the results, the sanction of the host country causes a decrease in the desire to enter the industry sector in the form of joint investment, but its effect depends on the effect of other variables such as market size, governance efficiency and commercial openness on the attracting foreign direct investment in the form of Joint venture is less.

The philosophy behind the establishment of universities is to educate human resources for the purpose of economic and social development. Investment in higher education ensures economic growth. The government should intervene in this area to optimize public resources and guide university development along the right path. The objective of the present research is to assess the requirements for allocating resources to higher education in Iran. For this purpose, key indicators for financial resource allocation have been identified in two categories: demand-driven and supply-driven. Taking into account the impact of sanctions, recommendations for designing a financial resource allocation model for higher education have been proposed. In this study, a systematic review of theoretical foundations was conducted, analyzing 92 selected scientific and research articles. An initial model was proposed based on these findings. Subsequently, through semi-structured interviews with experts and expert panel discussions, the requirements for financial resource allocation were documented, considering the effects of sanctions and the country’s fiscal capacities. According to the research findings, shifting government financial resource allocation indicators from supply-driven to demand-driven in higher education facilitates the achievement of quantitative and qualitative development goals for universities and mitigates the negative impact of sanctions on financial resource allocation to higher education. Additionally, financial resources should be redesigned with greater reliance on tax instruments to ensure financial sustainability.

This statement that "capital is the most important driving force for growth and subsequent economic development in countries" can be considered universally accepted by all economists (regardless of economic school of thought). As a result, all models of growth and economic development have been developed based on the accumulation of capital. Therefore, this question arises: How is it possible to strengthen the production structure and apply advanced technologies in countries that are facing a lack of capital? In this regard, researchers have shown great interest in foreign direct investment as a cover for the lack of capital in countries. Foreign direct investment is a type of investment that includes long-term relationships in which an economic unit in one country controls and benefits from a business unit in another country. Various studies indicate that successful countries in attracting FDI can provide the necessary conditions for positive future for multinational companies (as the most important players in the field of foreign direct investment). Furthermore, one of the main motivations for developing countries to attract foreign direct investment is mentioned as transferring and acquiring the necessary technologies to improve the productivity of domestic enterprises.   However, what leads to the attraction of this type of investment in developing countries (as the main applicants for capital and technological inputs) has always been a challenging issue. Some thinkers mainly focus on economic variables (such as economic openness, infrastructure availability, developed financial markets, etc.), while others do not find them sufficient and rely on non-economic factors, mainly derived from political science and international relations. According to them, the economic actions of individuals and companies are influenced by international political alignments, and therefore achieving economic development is only possible within this framework. This issue has become important in recent years with the popularization of the use of sanctions (meaning the use of economic tools to change the political behavior of a country) among the great economic powers.

Sanctions are one of the tools and mechanisms used by governments for protecting national interests and confining the power of other governments. After establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, this country has always faced a broad range of sanctions from the great world powers. This research tries to evaluate and analyze the role of desired governance in dealing with sanctions and campaign of economic war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The main question of this research is that "How is the role of desired governance in confronting with sanctions and economic war against the Islamic Republic of Iran analyzed and evaluated?" The answer to this question is that according to the transformational approach in favorable governance, the role of favorable governance in confronting with sanctions and economic war against the Islamic Republic of Iran can be evaluated and analyzed. The findings showed that considering the weak results of the Iran development strategy in the past years, application of a transformational approach in governance in order to confine the economic power of political institutions, improve transparency and accountability and create context for the formation of a powerful civil society are essential. This research investigates the role of desired governance in confronting with sanctions and economic war with descriptive and analytical method using of library, documentary resources and books and articles.

Production growth is the most important goal in all world economies. The main goal of all macroeconomic policies in different countries is to maintain and increase production as much as possible in the first step. Different policies are implemented in different countries. Among these policies, a main category is monetary policies. The purpose of this article is to estimate the effects of monetary policy (within the framework of liquidity regulation and interest rate control), government control (in the monetary sector) and sanctions on Iran's GDP. In this study, data from the years 1357 to 1399 were used. Monetary policy, government control and sanctions were considered as independent variables and production as a dependent variable. The method of data analysis is econometrics, autoregressive with distributed lags (ARDL). EViews software was used to estimate the model. The findings of the research show that the embargo had a negative effect on the GDP. The monetary policy of increasing the applied liquidity has had a positive effect on production, and the monetary policy within the framework of interest rate or bank interest has not had a significant effect on production. Also, government control policy has had a positive effect on production.

Liquidity is considered one of the important assets of economic units and enterprises, which plays a significant role in financial decisions. Organizations usually face imbalances in assets and liabilities that must be balanced. If an organization is not successful in balancing such a gap, there will be a liquidity risk and several adverse consequences such as the risk of inability to pay debts, the risk of reputation and credit, etc. will occur. Liquidity management includes preventing the inability to pay debts (bankruptcy), reducing the period of accounts receivable, increasing the amount of collections, and such cases. Investors, lenders and managers pay special attention to the financial statements of companies so that they can evaluate liquidity risk by using liquidity ratios, which is liquidity management.On the other hand, working capital management is a liquidity management tool and one of the strategies for achieving desirable liquidity for companies, so that desirable liquidity for companies is maintained to the extent that they are not exposed to surplus or shortage of liquidity. In addition, economic sanctions increase inflation and disrupt money transfers and liquidity management. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of economic sanctions on liquidity management (based on operating capital factor), in listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange. To test the research hypotheses, the financial information of the 126 companies (1260 years-companies) accepted in Tehran Stock Exchange was used between 2011 and 2020, given the tightening of sanctions in 2011. The necessary data were extracted by referring to the financial statements and accompanying explanatory notes in the companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange, available in the Codal, the website of the Tehran Stock Exchange Organization, and Rahvard Novin software. The final analysis of the collected data was done using Eviews and Stata econometric software. After measuring the variables of the research, multivariate linear regression analysis was used to test the research hypothesis. The experience of recent years shows that Iran has always struggled with the issue of economic sanctions. In terms of time, sanctions on Iran after the Islamic Revolution can be divided as follows: the initial period of the Islamic Revolution and hostage-taking (1979-1981); the period of Iraq's imposed war against Iran (1981-1988); Reconstruction period (1989-1992); Clinton era, bilateral restraint (1993-2001); After September 11, 2001 and after the resolutions of the Security Council. In the period from 2011 to 2014, the international sanctions against Iran caused a decrease of more than 17% in the real GDP of the country. In the period between 2012 and 2015, the most severe banking sanctions, including those of the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union, were imposed on Iranian banks and their SWIFT system was shut down. For this reason, studies investigating Iran's sanctions usually choose this period as the period of economic sanctions; Because it was unique in terms of intensity and depth and significantly overshadowed the economic and business indicators of the companies. The severity of the effects and consequences of the recent sanctions make it relevant to examine its impact on variables such as the company's liquidity.The results of the statistical tests indicate that economic sanctions have a negative impact on the liquidity management of the company by imposing restrictions on the purchase, sale, GDP, technology and contraction of economic activities (inactivity in the economy). In an alternative practice, the research model was also fitted with clustered standard error (cluster panel). The results of the model estimation with the panel cluster method (sensitivity test) support the main results of the research and state that sanctions have a negative effect on the company's liquidity management. Economic sanctions cause disruption in growth, financial flexibility, efficiency of economic activities, employment, profitability and consequently liquidity management by creating an unhealthy environment in the business environment and restrictions on doing business. Hence, companies perform worse in times of economic sanctions. Based on the results of the research and considering the negative effect of economic sanctions on liquidity management in companies, it is suggested that the statesmen and other authorities of the country pay more attention to the general policies of the economy in order to strengthen the economy of Iran. Regarding the impact of sanctions on liquidity management, there are two solutions to deal with it: a) Coordination of political and economic officials in the path of not sanctioning the country, which is of course bound to preserve the values of the society. b) The existence of alternative markets with which it is possible to exchange in the conditions of sanctions and the strengthening of any type of regional union and alternative market. The limitation of the current research is that the variable that is considered to measure sanctions is a virtual variable that depends on time and is defined in a period of time, and in this period, it cannot be confidently claimed that it is the only event that affects the macro economy of Iran. is sanctioned; Rather, other events, such as the deterioration of the balance sheets of banks and energy price reforms (implemented in 2010), etc., which have occurred in this period of time, can also affect the generalization of the results.

Currently many countries around the world attempt to attract foreign capital in order to overcome the lack of internal resources for investment. There are various methods for financing projects which include taking on foreign debts, drawing on domestic savings, attracting foreign investment, etc. However, the characteristic that distinguishes foreign direct investment as a unique alternative in this field is the investor’s participation in the economic activity and sharing in the resulting profits and capital losses.
This study examines the relationship between foreign direct technological investment in Iran with the point origin of the investment: the first block comprising of regional countries with friendly relations (Block 1), and the second block comprising of developed western countries and their allies (Block 2) during the years 1993 to 2022, with particular attention to the conditions imposed by sanctions. This study was based on the Bayesian Vector Autoregression (BVAR) model. According to the obtained results, Iran's human development index (HDI) has a positive relationship with the technology spillover from foreign direct investment, which confirms the important impact of educational investment on the point of origin of this form of foreign direct investment. Moreover, the structural and substantive difference between the foreign direct investment emanating from the two Blocks is evident in terms of technology level, and therefore the impact of sanctions in the short term on technology spillover by foreign direct investment from Block2 countries is greater than that of this form of investment from Block1 countries.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of sanctions on Iranian trade exchanges and the effect of de-dollarization on reducing the effect of sanctions. Dependence on the dollar has created several problems such as the devaluation of the national currency and inflationary shocks, and therefore de-dollarization is a policy to increase the power of central banks, especially for countries such as Iran that are under sanctions. ASEAN is the latest union to adopt its de-dollarization measures at the beginning of 2023. The present study seeks to investigate Iran-ASEAN trade and feasibility of using de-dollarization decision to improve Iran's trade exchange. Accordingly, questions have been raised about the impact of sanctions on Iran-ASEAN exchanges? And how ASEAN's de-dollarization decision will affect Iran-ASEAN exchanges. The hypothesis of the research is that sanctions will have a severe impact on Iran-ASEAN exchanges and de-dollarization will provide a suitable ground for increasing trades. To examine the current situation using the time series technique from 2000 to 2020, it was determined that Iran-ASEAN exchanges were severely affected by the 2018 sanctions so that exports have fallen sharply in value. The choice of the dollar alternative currency and the use of alternative SWIFT systems will provide the basis for improving Iran-ASEAN trade exchanges.

An inverse and simultaneous change in financial depth and the interest rate have started from 1387 in the Iranian banking system. The phenomenon was coincident h a widespread decline in bank health indicators. Using the bank-level data from 1386 to 1392, in this study, we try to find a causal relationship between a bank's health and its lending power in line with lending channel literature. We quantify bank health as a multidimensional concept representing liquidity, nonperforming loans, capital, profitability, and debt to central bank ratios; and use bank sanctions as an exogenous shock to banks. Our findings show that loans grow faster in banks with higher liquidity and lower nonperforming loan ratios, such that a one percentage point in these ratios respectively changes loan growth rate by 0.04 and -0.05 percentage point on average. Additionally, we also show that the loan growth rate's sensibility to bank health indicators weakened after the sanctions' shock. Our results are robust to changes in the definition of regression variables, the set explanatory variables, and estimation methods.

The main objective of this study is to assess the impacts of financial sanction on combination of the factors of production in Iran. This analysis was performed using the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and it focused on investment, employment, production, and price levels. After calibrating the CGE model and measuring the values of exogenous parameters and variables, the study assessed the economic impacts of sanctions on Iran’s economy using the 2016 input-output table (IO) and other statistical information based on scenario building. The results obtained using GAMS 34 revealed that Financial sanctions change the composition of production inputs in Iran and lead to an increase in the share of labor, compared to the capital factor in the economy. These changes lead to a decrease in production and an increase in the general level of prices, so that in the first and second scenarios, 4.42 and 11.11 percent, respectively, reduce economic growth and 1.84 and 4.72 percent, increase the general level of production prices

In the past few years, Bayesian econometrics has provided suitable solutions to overcome uncertainties regarding the selection of parameters and models. This research seeks to identify and prioritize the variables affecting Iran's foreign trade with an emphasis on sanctions and geopolitical risk indicators. For this purpose, Bayesian, dynamic, and selective averaging modeling has been applied using 45 variables affecting foreign trade between 1370 and 1400 (solar year). According to the results, among BMA, TVP-DMA, and TVP-DMS, BVAR, and OLS models; the BMA model was determined as the most efficient model.Based on the BMA model, 11 non-fragile variables affecting foreign trade were identified, which are: sanctions, structural institutional index, real effective exchange rate, export complexity, interest rate, business climate, economic openness, economic growth rate, geopolitical risk, inflation and trade integration index (Grobel and Lloyd index). A sanction, geopolitical risk, and interest rate had a negative effect on foreign trade, and other variables had positive effects. The volume of Iran's foreign trade is facing a high fluctuation because of the high probability of the occurrence of non-fragile variables. To improve the performance of Iran's foreign trade indicators, considering the impact of geopolitical risks and sanctions on the country's foreign trade, improving economic flexibility and resilience policies should be ordered by policymakers.

  it is important to correctly estimate income and price elasticities and the impact of economic sanctions on the consumption behavior of Iranian households. So, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the consumption behavior of urban households in Iran by applying the quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS). Also, the existence of structural failure in the consumption basket preferences of tea, sugar, and sugar of urban households has been investigated using the parametric approach and the switching regression framework developed by Ohtani and Katayama (1986) from 1998 to 2022.The price elasticity of various types of tea, sugar, and sugar has increased after sanctions and Iranian and foreign tea, sugar and sugar have changed from non-elastic products to products with elasticity. The increase in price elasticities shows that with the increase in prices and inflation in the years after the sanctions, the sensitivity of consumers to price changes has increased. Therefore, considering the elasticity of the high price of products after the sanctions, it will be the right decision to use price tools to protect consumers.

The process of urban growth and development in the past decades has been strongly influenced by the approach of political economy. In Iran, urban development has been formed as an exogenous phenomenon based on the growth of services, which is by no means a continuation of its historical urbanization (before 1920) but a dynamic imposed from outside and the product of unequal economic and social relations with industrialized countries alongside of future's decisions as a catalyst. It is tomorrow. In the present research, which has been done using an analytical method and a quantitative approach, the effect of sanctions on the housing sector between 2006 and 2017 has been investigated. To explain the research model, five categories of political, economic, institutional, social and physical factors were considered. Moreover, using spatial econometric models with three types of cross-sectional data, time series and integrated data were studied. Due to the lack of access and lack of sufficient information in the statistical period, regarding the studied indicators, in first step, the cities of provincial capitals and then the cities of the 2nd and 3rd degree districts were evaluated. Furthermore, based on cities data, the housing price growth model was analyzed using the spatial error model. Due to the variance heterogeneity in this model, KP-HET estimator is used. The results of survey indicate that existence of spatial effects of sanctions on housing price growth in the cities of Iran during the study period. As among the economic variables; Poverty index, unemployment rate and specialization, and among the social variables, migration rate, general fertility rate and active population were considered as the most important factors affecting housing price growth. These variables have been both a cause and a consequence of the disorganization of a coherent pattern of price growth in later periods.

There have been many studies on economic sanctions and the effectiveness of these sanctions. In these studies, the sanction variable treats as one or two dummy variables (binary), to indicate at most four levels (no sanctions-mild sanctions-severe sanctions-comprehensive sanctions). Studying the effectiveness of economic sanctions requires recognizing the extent and severity of sanctions in various sectors, so it is not possible to examine the effectiveness of sanctions and any review of economic sanctions independent of the severity and extent of sanctions. To this end, in this article, we present the severity of sanctions imposed on the energy sector to a variable between zero to five to provide a better indicator to understand the pressure of economic sanctions imposed on the energy sector of Iran. We examine the effectiveness of sanctions by entering the sanctions severity variable on Iran's foreign trade with five major trading partners, including Germany, China, India, United Arab Emirates, and Turkey, based on the gravity equation through an interactive dummy variable method. We tried to present all the sanctions imposed on Iran's energy sector, between 1992 and 2018. The results show a significant and negative effect of the intensity of energy sector sanctions on Iran's foreign trade. China and UAE have the lowest response to sanctions on Iran’s Energy sector. Also, the highest reduction of trade with Iran due to energy sector sanctions is dedicated to India and Germany.

The 2012 UN sanctions on Iran have forced the country into a long-lasting economic recession during the last decade, causing both demand and supply to be suppressed in a general equilibrium relationship. However, as the sanctions targeted trade, oil revenue, and budget deficit, the economy’s supply-side constraints are of first-order magnitude, causing a reduction in oil income and a rise in the government budget deficit. This study uses observations from manufacturing plants in Iran from 2003 to 2013 to quantify the share of production factors in explaining production deviation. We employ a general equilibrium model in the literature of business cycle accounting, which quantifies wedges in different markets. The UN sanctions (Jan. 2012) occurred during observations, allowing us to assess changes after the sanctions using the event study model. Besides, we simulate counterfactual experiments with each market’s wedge to obtain a share of each wedge in explaining production changes. Results show that productivity is the main explanatory factor of the production gap during the sanctions. Results for the other factors of production (i.e., labor, investment, and inputs) indicate that the input market contains the highest frictions after the sanctions; we do not find evidence that the labor and capital markets are affected in the years following sanctions. However, the rest of the results are not robust except for the productivity, which may be due to the lack of a more extended panel of data after the sanctions. The findings are consistent with the rest of the literature on Iran’s sanctions.

Sanctions are a component of the dominant diplomacy in the contemporary world. In fact, the different countries employ sanctions as a means to advance their interests in foreign policy. The United States of America has consistently used sanctions as a method of addressing countries that do not align with its interests. The Islamic Republic of Iran and Venezuela are among the countries sanctioned by the US. Since the onset of the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979, the United States has sanctioned Tehran, citing various reasons such as the alleged support for terrorism, violation of human rights, and attempts at acquiring weapons of mass destruction. After years of negotiations and diplomacy between Iran and the world powers, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was finally signed in 2015. As a result, some US sanctions against Iran were lifted. However, following Donald Trump’s election as the president of the US and his withdrawal from the JCPOA, an order was issued on May 8, 2018 to re-impose sanctions against Iran.Another country under the US sanctions is Venezuela. In fact, the US sanctions against Venezuela began during the presidency of Hugo Chávez and intensified in 2014 with the allegations of corruption and misuse of Venezuelan financial resources. With the election of Nicolás Maduro as the president of Venezuela in 2018 and the beginning of protests against his way of governing the country, the US stepped up its sanctions against this South American country. Donald Trump, who had previously declared his support for Maduro's protesters, attempted to impose restrictions on Maduro’s administration in the political, economic, and social spheres by issuing sanction orders, bills, and laws. The simultaneous imposition of sanctions against Iran and Venezuela raised the following questions: What are the similarities and differences between the sanctions imposed on these two states? Additionally, what impacts have these sanctions had on their economies?

 Theoretical Framework:

Sanctions are classified as limited, moderate, or extensive actions based on their scope and as economic or non-economic decisions in terms of content. Sanction theorists frequently assess the economic impacts of sanctions within the realm of macroeconomic indicators, which encompass factors such as inflation and currency rates, export and import rates, economic growth, unemployment and employment rates, and other significant economic indicators. Furthermore, sanctions can have non-economic impacts on the target country, directly and indirectly affecting its cultural, political, and social values. This study analyzes the economic impacts of the sanctions imposed on Iran and Venezuela with a particular focus on the foregoing categories of sanctions. The key aspect of sanctions is the process by which they can prove effective. In other words, what measures should be taken to enhance the effectiveness of sanctions? In this regard, a conceptual framework was developed in this study to identify several factors that affect the effectiveness of sanctions. These factors include the number of allies of the sanctioning state, the degree of focus on vulnerable areas of the target state, the experience and adaptability of the target state to the applied sanctions, and the type, content, and intensity of sanctions.

This research adopts a comparative approach, which is a scientific inference method that involves systematically juxtaposing similarities and differences among social phenomena, whether for descriptive or causal purposes. Moreover, an analytical-explanatory method was used for data analysis, and a desk method was adopted for data collection. The necessary data including the laws of the US Congress and the executive orders of the US President were extracted from electronic databases. The effects of the sanction laws on the political and economic systems of Iran and Venezuela were then clarified through publications and economic data showcasing the economic situations against these two countries.

According to the results of analyzing the economic statistics of the two countries presented in the above table, Iran encountered a decline of 47.9% in its daily petroleum production, whereas Venezuela witnessed a more substantial decrease of 76.9%. In the realm of exportation and importation, Iran experienced a decline of 47.5% and 15.3%, respectively. Similarly, Venezuela encountered a decrease of 48.5% and 44.7% in these areas, respectively. Regarding foreign investment attraction, Iran experienced a decline of 53.86%, whereas Venezuela suffered a more significant decrease of 60.67%. Additionally, the inflation rate in Iran had a significant surge of 277%, whereas it skyrocketed by an astonishing 114,000% in Venezuela compared with the pre-sanction period. In fact, Venezuela is experiencing the highest inflation rate in the Western Hemisphere. Regarding the unemployment rates of the two nations, the situation is somewhat complex. The unemployment rate in Iran only experienced a minimal change in comparison with the period before sanctions. However, in the case of Venezuela, this rate surged by 22.2% compared with the pre-sanction era. In addition, the Iranian rial's value against the US dollar decreased by nearly 303%, whereas the bolivar's value declined by 149%. Lastly, Iran’s economic growth reduced by 235.1% as a result of the sanctions, whereas Venezuela's economic growth decreased by 47%.  Upon the careful analysis of the legislative measures enacted by US Congress and the executive orders issued by the US President, alongside a comprehensive assessment of the economic conditions prevailing in both nations subsequent to the implementation of sanctions, there are evidently notable resemblances in the nature and substance of the sanctions imposed on Venezuela and Iran. However, the adverse outcomes of these sanctions have had more pronounced impacts on Venezuela than on Iran. In relation to the subjects and substances of sanctions, it has been observed that the sanctions imposed on Venezuela primarily focus on industrial sectors such as petroleum, mining, shipping, government officials, and to a certain extent, the banking industry. Regarding Iran, in addition to these areas, financial, nuclear, and military sanctions have been affected. Furthermore, Venezuela has faced sanctions imposed by the US Congress and the US Treasury as well as several European and American states. In the case of Iran, however, the US Congress has been less involved, and there are no multilateral sanctions in place against Tehran. Regarding the rationale behind imposing sanctions on the two nations, it is evident from the findings that Iran has consistently faced allegations of engaging in destabilizing actions in the Middle East, engaging in perilous military endeavors, and pursuing nuclear activities, among other concerns. Nevertheless, Maduro's administration has faced allegations of corruption, repression, and violations of human rights. Simultaneously, it is important to acknowledge that corruption, mismanagement, censorship, and internal repression have consistently served as justifications for implementing sanctions on both nations.

 Conclusion and Suggestion:

According to the analysis of alterations in diverse economic domains including daily petroleum production, export and import activities, foreign investment influx, inflation rates, and other pertinent economic indicators subsequent to the implementation of sanctions, it becomes evident that Venezuela’s economy exhibited a higher degree of vulnerability in comparison with Iran’s. This is due to some factors including Venezuela’s greater reliance on petroleum sources and gold mines as well as the corresponding greater focus of sanction agents on these matters, the country’s severe internal conflicts, the greater scope of Venezuela’s sanctions that of Iran, and Venezuela’s less experience in dealing with sanctions. The foregoing findings do not imply that the adverse economic situations of the two countries since 2017 have been exclusively attributable to the US sanctions, nor do the findings substantiate the complete efficacy of sanctions. Sometimes, incorrect economic policies or the improper implementation of policies, e.g., inadequate budgeting process reforms, failure to decrease dependence on the dollar, lack of diversification in exports (particularly non-petroleum exports), and failure to invest in economic opportunities and platforms, have resulted in dire economic conditions. The overall effects of sanctions on governments are contingent upon a multitude of political, economic, social, and cultural variables as well as domestic, regional, and international circumstances. Hence, despite the implementation of comparable sanctions on two given states, identical outcomes cannot be anticipated. Notably, although sanctions severely weaken the economies of sanctioned nations, the two cases examined in this study (i.e., Iran and Venezuela) demonstrate that the exertion of economic pressure does not change the political conduct of governing bodies. Therefore, it can be argued that, in contrast to the intentions of those who imposed sanctions, the impacts of sanctions will primarily be felt by casual citizens rather than statesmen. In order to have a clearer analysis in this regard, it is suggested to comprehensively compare the experiences of other states under similar sanctions with those of Iran and Venezuela.