Steelman · slot B
The engineered-shortage case
An analyst of sanctions and siege warfare would argue —Call this what it is: shortages by design. Iran's medicine crisis isn't a tragic byproduct of fog-of-war confusion — it is the convergence of three deliberate pressures. Strikes have hit healthcare facilities. Iranian ports are under blockade, choking off pharmaceutical imports and the precursors local manufacturers need. And the sanctions architecture, layered on top, makes even permitted medical trade financially impossible because banks won't clear the transactions. Each of these is a policy choice. When officials in Tehran report price increases of 1,000 percent on some medicines, that number is the signature of a system being squeezed at every node simultaneously. Civilians bear the cost, and they were always going to — that is how sieges work, which is why international humanitarian law is supposed to forbid them.