Nadeem Mirza is not from Iran, nor does he have anything to do with Tehran's alleged plans to develop a nuclear bomb. But he is suffering a huge financial loss due to US sanctions.

"Oriental rugs have been in the US for more than 100 years," says Mirza, 51, a Pakistani businessman who specializes in repairing antique Central Asian rugs for affluent Americans.

Last year, he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because the US authorities refused to release the shipment of old carpets that he had repaired in Pakistan for his clients in northeastern US.

"It took me 20 years to build credibility in this business, but it seems I am going to be one more addition to the 27 million unemployed US citizens," Mirza told me in a tone filled with frustration and anger.

Mirza says he has suffered a lot from sanctions. But he is not the only one. In fact, there are tens of thousands of small business owners in and outside Iran who have lost their livelihood as a result of US trade embargo.

The US sanctions are meant to press Tehran to halt its nuclear program suspected of nuclear weapon manufacturing, but they have failed to bring about any change in Tehran's policy.

Iran, for its part, has consistently held that, as a signatory to the United Nations Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), it has a legitimate right to produce nuclear energy and thus it would not abandon its nuclear projects.

Like Iran, North Korea is also facing a tough regime of sanctions aimed at reversing its nuclear program.

Though condemned by the international community in recent weeks for conducting nuclear weapon tests, North Korea seems to be in no mood to bow down to the US and its allies. Why?

North Korea has a long history of struggle against foreign occupation. So does Iran, a nation which abhors foreign dictates and takes pride in being one of the cradles of world civilization.

In both cases, it should be no surprise that these nations are obsessed with what some scholars of world history might describe as "national pride" and "collective self-esteem."

It seems that Washington is either unwilling or unable to understand that it need not take punitive measures against these countries and its other perceived adversaries, but instead rely on diplomatic means to settle disputes.

Nevertheless, those obsessed with the notion that sanctions could subdue other nations don't seem to understand that history and memory in many parts of the world play a significant role in shaping a political mind-set that might be more focused on collective self-esteem than economic concerns.

If Iran is trying to develop a nuclear bomb for real, it must be condemned. But the US has never imposed sanctions against India, Pakistan, and Israel, which remain outside the fold of the NPT while possessing dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of nuclear weapons.

These three countries have no fear of sanctions because they are close economic and military partners of the US. And Cuba, a small island nation that has no nuclear weapons, has had sanctions imposed by the US for well over half a century to no effect.

On the other hand, many in the US believe the sanction policy is simply absurd because it hurts working people at home and abroad.

"There is little empirical evidence that sanctions can achieve ambitious foreign policy goals," argues Robert Pape, a US political scientist who has done extensive research on the impact of sanctions.

He thinks that in most cases sanctions are used by policymakers "to rescue their own prestige or their state's international reputation and rhetoric to […] demonize the target regime."

He calls it the "American way of war," which "democratic leaders may sometimes adopt in order to give peace a chance and thus disarm criticism of the use of force later."

Mirza cannot stomach any more. "What is going on? Who is going to benefit from this kind of policy?" he asks.

The Iranian rugs he took from the US and brought back from Pakistan were confiscated by the authorities for months.

"It's just going to hit the US citizens. We are just shooting our own feet without aiming properly," he says.

The author is an award-winning journalist who is based at the UN in New York. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn