US commits serious crimes of violating human rights in the Middle East and beyond

2. Forced transformation, unilateral sanctions, severe infringement of people's rights to development, life and health

The United States has wantonly suppressed non-compliant countries and organizations in the Middle East, and coercively promoted American values in the region, so as to ensure US-dominated global political, economic and security orders.

Its essential goal is to maintain America's military, economic and conceptual hegemony, which in consequence has altered the independent development paths of regional countries and severely undermined the sovereignty of related countries in the Middle East as well as their people's rights to development and health.

First, the United States subverted governments, interfered in other countries' internal affairs, and infringed upon others' sovereignty and human rights.

On one hand, after the end of the Cold War, in order to secure absolute dominance over the Middle East and other places, the United States launched wars against non-compliant sovereign countries in the region to directly push for regime change, and then forcibly transplanted "American democracy" and transformed regional countries' systems and development paths. The most typical examples are its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003 respectively to overthrow the governments it disliked.

On the other hand, the United States has long supported the infiltration of non-governmental organizations and proxies in the Middle East society, and repeatedly changed the development paths of the Middle East countries by means of "color revolution."

As a "pawn" and "white glove" of the US government in its bid to interfere in other countries' internal affairs and instigate separatism and confrontation, the National Endowment for Democracy has served the strategic interests of the United States by carrying out long-term infiltration and subversion activities against Middle East countries. Its record has been notorious.

With continuous financial support from the White House and the US Congress and by obeying orders from the US government, the organization incited color revolutions in Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Syria, Libya and other countries by providing funding to pro-US individuals and groups, and was the key mastermind of the "Arab Spring."

The United States attempts to transform regional countries and establish fragile, dependent regimes to serve its global hegemony. Its forced "institutional exports" with strong hegemonic undertones have crippled regional countries' efforts to independently explore their development paths and caused a series of disastrous consequences. Its forced transformation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, among many others, has disrupted political order, and destroyed social and national cohesion in these countries.

Such acts of toppling the governments of other countries by force, interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and forcible export of the so-called "democracy" not only violated the basic norms of international relations such as prohibiting the use of force and non-interference in internal affairs, but also seriously violated the rights of the people of the relevant countries to choose their own development paths as well as their basic human rights.

Second, the United States has abused unilateral sanctions against sovereign countries, causing severe economic losses and a decline in the quality of life of the people in those countries. The United States is the only "sanctions superpower" in the world. According to the Treasury 2021 sanctions review, the United States has had more than 9,400 sanctions in effect by the 2021 fiscal year.

Since 1979, the United States has imposed various unilateral sanctions on Iran and other countries. In 1996, it issued the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, forbidding foreign companies from investing in Iran's and Libya's energy industry, and implementing long-arm jurisdiction, which is gravely harmful and has had a far-reaching impact.

Since then, the United States has imposed more and more sanctions on Iran. The Trump administration exerted sanctions and maximum pressure on Iran in an attempt to effect change and overthrow the Iranian government. Former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, while in office, said US sanctions imposed by the Trump administration cost Iran at least $200 billion in economic losses, describing US sanctions as inhumane and a terrorist act against the entire Iranian nation.

From 1980 to 1992, the United States imposed unilateral sanctions on Libya, and from 1992 to 2003, it coerced and roped in its allies to expand the unilateral sanctions against Libya. The World Bank said the Libyan economy has lost $18 billion due to sanctions, while an official Libyan estimate put the loss at $33 billion.

After the first Gulf War, the United States imposed brutal unilateral sanctions on Iraq with severe consequences. From August 1990 to May 2003, sanctions cost Iraq $150 billion in losses of oil revenues. To date, Iraq's per capita annual income has fallen short of its 1990 level ($7,050).

In addition, the sanctions have caused a serious humanitarian disaster in Iraq, with the infant mortality rate doubling and the under-five mortality rate increasing sevenfold. Meanwhile, Iraq's education, health and social security systems were destroyed, and its literacy rate fell from 89 percent in 1987 to 57 percent in 1997.

After withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan in 2021, the United States has not only imposed economic sanctions on Afghanistan, but also froze billions of dollars of foreign exchange reserves of the Afghan central bank, bringing the Afghan economy to the brink of collapse and worsening the life of the people. World Food Program officials pointed out that the US economic sanctions on Afghanistan has exacerbated the local food crisis, with 98 percent of Afghans not consuming enough food and nearly half of children under 5-year-old going to be in a state of severe malnutrition.

However, on Feb 11, 2022, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order demanding that the $7 billion frozen assets of the Afghan Central Bank in the United States be divided equally, with half of the money going to a fund for 9/11 victims and the other half to an account of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to "help the Afghan people," while making clear that the assets would not be returned to the Taliban authorities. The US government's blatant plundering of the Afghan people's properties, a hegemonic act, has been widely condemned by the international community.

In an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine, Daniel W. Drezner, a professor with Tufts University, criticized the abuse of economic coercion by successive US governments. Sanctions have become the go-to solution for nearly every foreign policy problem, which do not work but exact a humanitarian toll.

The unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States against countries in the Middle East and elsewhere have ultimately hurt the ordinary people, and seriously undermined the right to development of the sanctioned countries and their people.

Third, the United States has created humanitarians crises, severely undermining the right to health of the people in related countries. The US-initiated Gulf War, the Iraq war and subsequent violent conflicts have destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure, grossly reduced the capacity of the country's public services, and the people are faced with a lack of water, electricity and medical care, with the poor, children, widows, the elderly and other most vulnerable groups suffering the most.

Take the health sector for example. After the Gulf War, the level of medical care in Iraq declined significantly. In 1990, 97 percent of Iraq's urban population and 71 percent of its rural population had access to public health services. After the Iraq war in 2003, some 20,000 local doctors fled and many medical facilities were ruined in the fighting. As a result of the damage to power plants and water treatment facilities caused by US bombings, the number of people suffering from diarrhoeal diseases was four times higher than pre-war level. In Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, nine of its 13 hospitals were destroyed, leaving this city of 1.8 million people with a meager 1,000 hospital beds available.

In addition, when the United States launched the Iraq War, it used depleted uranium munitions in large quantities, causing enormous damage to the health of the local population and seriously violating their right to health.

Turning a blind eye to the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US government still insists on imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran, Syria and other countries, making it difficult for the sanctioned countries to obtain medical supplies needed to fight the pandemic.

In 2020, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said: "At this crucial time, both for global public health reasons, and to support the rights and lives of millions of people in these countries, sectoral sanctions should be eased or suspended. In a context of global pandemic, impeding medical efforts in one country heightens the risk for all of us."

As a result of the sanctions, Iran has been unable to import essential medicines and medical equipment, which has seriously affected the health of millions of Iranians.

The Iranian government applied for a $5 billion special loan from the IMF to raise funds against the COVID-19 pandemic, but was blocked by the United States. The United States has blocked Iran's access to COVID-19 vaccines by freezing Iran's overseas funds and threatening vaccine suppliers.

In 2020, Iran said it had tried three times to pay for vaccines under COVAX, the WHO's COVID-19 Implementation Plan, but failed due to US sanctions and restrictions.

According to an op-ed published by the Brookings Institute, rather than easing sanctions to help Iran manage the pandemic better, the United States piled on more sanctions. Had sanctions eased when the pandemic hit Iran, the article said, 13,000 lives could have been saved.