Mohammad Sadegh Karimi

Department of Energy Engineering,

Sharif University of Technology, Iran

m_karimi@energy.sharif.edu

ORCID 0000-0002-8768-1106

How the possibility of a fight-back strategy affects the consequences of a sanctions regime

Abbas Maleki

Department of Energy Engineering,

Sharif University of Technology, Iran

maleki@sharif.edu

ORCID 0000-0003-2904-4587

*Corresponding author

Asieh Haieri Yazdi

Centre for Energy, Petroleum, and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP), School of Social Sciences, University of Dundee, UK

2391480@dundee.ac.uk

ORCID 0000-0002-2116-3146 

Abstract. Sanctions imposed by a country against another country are considered as a foreign policy tool. Many studies have investigated different aspects of sanctions including the efficacy of sanctions to alter the target country’s behaviour. However, the effects of a potential fight-back strategy adopted by a target country have been discussed rarely. In this paper, the outcomes of a possible fight-back strategy are simulated using game theoretical analysis. To find the matching state of game theory and sanction regimes, we have conducted a critical and systematic review of 12 sanctions, from 1950 to 2012. The results show that the capability of a target country to implement fight-back strategies provides the opportunity to change the sender’s expected outcomes. It also makes the occurrence of future sanctions less probable or even less feasible.

Received: November, 2019

1st Revision: May, 2020

Accepted: September, 2020

DOI: 10.14254/2071-8330.2020/13-3/17

JEL Classification: C73, F51, N45

Keywords: sanctions, game theory, fight-back strategy, rival country, Iran sanctions