6,000+ Entities Sanctioned Over Russia Alone. Did It Work? The Data Is Genuinely Mixed.

Sanctions remain one of the most heavily used U.S. foreign policy tools, at real, measurable scale

Economic sanctions, financial penalties and trade restrictions imposed on foreign governments, entities, or individuals, have become one of the most frequently used tools of U.S. foreign policy short of military action. According to a 2025 Government Accountability Office review, as of January 2025, nearly three years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the State and Treasury Departments had designated over 6,000 entities and individuals under Russia-related sanctions authorities alone.

The Trump administration's approach in 2025 marked a real, documented shift in emphasis rather than a reduction in sanctions activity overall. Center for a New American Security tracking found the administration's use of financial sanctions diverged from recent predecessors specifically through a decrease in new Russia-focused designations paired with a surge in sanctions targeting Iran and transnational criminal organizations.

Iran's economy shows genuine strain, but the sanctions haven't stopped its oil exports

The Trump administration reimposed "maximum pressure" sanctions on Iran in early 2025, targeting a shadow fleet of tankers responsible for shipping Iranian oil along with numerous facilitators and Chinese refineries purchasing it. Iran's own documented economic crisis has been severe: inflation reached 48.6% in October 2025 and remained at 42.2% in December 2025, according to compiled economic tracking, with the broader crisis attributed to a combination of sanctions, domestic mismanagement, and structural inefficiencies.

Despite this pressure, a December 2025 analysis from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies found Trump's renewed maximum pressure campaign had "not meaningfully hindered Iran's oil exports" through 2025, with export rates not differing significantly from the same period in 2024. Iran has maintained export volume in part through an extensive sanctions evasion network, including a shadow fleet of tankers and reflagging schemes that, according to Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis, has been actively assisted by China, which can process Iranian oil relabeled as originating from other countries to bypass restrictions.

The sanctions landscape has genuinely diverged from prior administrations in specific, documented ways

• A Council on Strategic and International Studies review notes the U.S. has historically relied heavily on "secondary sanctions," penalties that don't require a direct U.S. jurisdictional connection, to pressure third-country businesses into compliance, a practice the U.K. and EU have followed to a lesser extent
• The Atlantic Council's Energy Sanctions Dashboard found that sanctions waivers and market disruptions pushed Russia to supply approximately 300 million barrels of crude to international markets by mid-May 2026, with India re-emerging as a major importer and Southeast Asia becoming a new destination
• China has been able to save an estimated $28.8 million per day on oil imports at peak discount levels by purchasing steeply discounted sanctioned crude from Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, according to Atlantic Council tracking
• The administration also revoked the prior administration's rescission of Cuba's State Sponsor of Terrorism designation and reimposed sanctions on entities linked to Cuba's military and intelligence services, illustrating how sanctions policy shifts extend well beyond the two highest-profile Russia and Iran programs

A genuine, unresolved debate exists among foreign policy researchers about whether sanctions actually work

A Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis frames the core empirical question directly: without multilateral enforcement, sanctions generally only cause serious economic pain when the sanctioned country is genuinely dependent on economic relations with the country imposing them, a dynamic that held for apartheid-era South Africa but doesn't fully apply to major powers like Russia or China, which can absorb pressure or assist other sanctioned states. Separately, a Foreign Policy Research Institute-affiliated December 2025 report specifically argued policymakers should treat secondary sanctions as a first-tier tool rather than a last resort, particularly against large, sanctions-resistant adversaries like Russia and Iran that have had years to build evasion networks.

The core disagreement

Sanctions supporters generally argue they remain one of the few serious tools available to pressure hostile governments without direct military action, and point to Iran's documented economic strain, severe inflation and currency devaluation, as evidence sanctions are imposing real costs even without an immediate policy reversal. Sanctions skeptics generally argue that broad, comprehensive sanctions regimes disproportionately harm ordinary civilians rather than the officials they target, and that evasion networks, like the shadow fleets moving hundreds of millions of barrels of sanctioned oil, show diminishing real-world effectiveness against determined, well-resourced adversaries. Both sides broadly agree that sanctions enforcement and evasion have become a genuine, ongoing technical race, with the CSIS analysis explicitly describing this dynamic as one where policymakers must "recalibrate faster, strike harder, and adapt more nimbly" simply to keep pace with how adversaries route around existing restrictions.