Washington seems certain that exerting sanctions on countries is the safest way to achieve their foreign policy goals. In reality economic and political sanctions do little to control the governments they target, hitting ordinary citizens hard instead. “The aim of sanctions is to harm the state. But the real victims are ordinary, regular people. Experience has shown that there’s a huge wedge between what ordinary people experience under sanctions, and what the elite do,” RT’s Middle East correspondent Paula Slier reported.