Unintended Consequences: Iranian Sanctions and Google Ads

An interesting post by a tech columnist at Foreign Policy: due to US sanctions, Google Ads don't appear on Iranian social news sites: as a result potential income is denied to the very people seeking to change the regime the sanctions are directed against. The headline — "Iran's Twitter Revolution Won't Succeed Because of US Sanctions" — probably overstates the case a bit, but it's a reminder that sanctions are a coercive tool that can often hurt the very people who need to be encouraged.