What the US really wants is not respect of human rights or better living conditions for the people (see Libya, see Iraq, see Palestine, see the bloody civil war in Syria). What they want is to reduce every non-aligned country to either vassal or rubble.
This is a great phrase, I'm going to borrow that and use it.
I'm curious if:
1) you still live in Iran and/or have immediate family who do?
2) is your opinion common amongst Iranians (and/or Persians)?
3) do/would you still feel the same way if the sanctions brought extreme economic hardship on the people of Iran?
(Considering your remark about North Korea, I'm assuming the answer to the latter is "yes".)
2) I don’t know. I know there is a minority (again no idea how big) that really likes Trump because they really hate the Islamic regime, but these people tend to be poor (? Again not that sure) and have little grasp of economics or international politics.
3) The current sanctions have brought extreme hardships on us Iranians. From my own selfish viewpoint, I am hoping for much lighter sanctions from the potential Biden presidency. I would, however, prefer the harsh sanctions to the IR ever having nuclear bombs. (Not that I can see them being effective at preventing the bombs.) I am also not poor; I think a high-pressure strategy that results in a mass revolution by the poor can be to their medium term advantage (such a revolution would, of course, hurt the middle/upper classes a lot). But such a revolution might very well be impossible by the modern technology and the centralization of power. So to summarize, I think effective sanctions will be worth the hardships they cause, but ineffective sanctions not. The current hard sanctions seem ineffective to me unless they are made much more stringent (which might not be possible) or are paired with military interventions.