The Emperor’s Coat Tails: The Value of UK Sanctions in a US-Dominated World

The UK remains at the forefront of using sanctions to achieve its foreign policy goals. But in a world where those goals are prone to shift around a dominant US agenda, how can it continue to claim the moral high ground?

The moral dimension

Why (assuming it matters at all) should an ordinary citizen support the imposition of sanctions? Even in an era where values-driven foreign policy appears to be giving way to more nakedly self-serving agendas, governments rarely present sanctions as serving purely economic or transitory objectives. Rather, they are presented as an expression of a nation’s values, of a desire to do “the right thing” on the international stage (and, on notable occasions, even domestically), and to respond to the misconduct of others. With nations, even allies, increasingly disagreeing on what “the right thing” is and what constitutes misconduct, this begs questions about how such claims to legitimacy are maintained, and how decisions are made about what measures are imposed, and against whom.

For the UK, the use of sanctions in 2026 raises these questions in a particularly acute way, against a backdrop of:

• its withdrawal from the European Union (EU) (“Brexit”), and the political instability that followed;
• its continuing roles in the G7 and the UN Security Council, and as a global financial centre;
• the disproportionate influence on global finance of its Crown Dependencies (CDs) and Overseas Territories (OTs);
• the whiplash-inducing response of its political leaders to Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine; and
• its relationships with key allies, including the US, in Iran and in the broader context of national and global instability.

Democracy and distrust

A key justification for many of the UK’s sanctions regimes, including against Russia and Iran, is the protection of democratic values and the rule of law. In moral terms, the citizens of the UK and its international allies might reasonably be assumed to hold such values dear, and, to some extent, they influence the government’s ability to speak with moral authority more generally. In a democratic state, the way misconduct is identified and dealt with (at least domestically) is defined by criminal laws that can be made and unmade by the legislature, which reflects the views of citizens through elections. On the international stage, the positioning of a democratic state against authoritarian or despotic governments, or against states where elections occur but are neither free nor fair, is often accompanied by a message that it is part of our role (that of the UK, Europe, and “the West”) to defend such values.

An analysis of whether sanctions achieve that aim might usefully start with a reminder that those values are generally held to include:

• the protection of private citizens’ rights (subject to proportionate restrictions), including to privacy, free speech the free enjoyment of property;
• the rule of law, including the principle that criminal penalties should be based on clearly foreseeable prohibitions and imposed only after a fair trial;
• the separation of powers between a state’s executive, judicial and legislative branches, to protect against tyranny; and
• the independence of the state’s law officers, press and professions.

A more contested addition to that list might extend the notion of respecting the rule of law to an international context. At a minimum this might include respect for binding (though not universal) international agreements such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the latter guaranteeing the important principle of freedom of navigation through international waterways. The more controversial aspects for some might include the investigation of and enforcement against supranational crimes against humanity, especially via the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Notably, the US’ position is (and was, even before the current administration) somewhat nuanced, as a signatory to the NPT (as is Iran) but not UNCLOS or the ICC. Public pronouncements by members of the current administration seem to suggest a stance on international law somewhere between deep scepticism and outright contempt, suggesting that whatever the justifications may be for imposing sanctions, a “rules-based international order” is not among them.

“Targeted” sanctions

Traditionally, sanctions were envisaged (and, to an extent, they are seen in this way today) as outside the scope of such values, given their nature as part of the prerogative of states’ executive leaders – whether emperors, kings or presidents – as an alternative to military action by one state against another. In the modern world, their nature and impact are very different, essentially imposing criminal prohibitions with reference to (though not necessarily against) parties associated with conduct and/or countries that are deemed to be problematic in one way or another.

The UK’s journey from “comprehensive” to “smart” or “targeted” sanctions since the early 21st century has been closely tied to its role in international institutions, particularly the UN and the EU. The idea of imposing asset freezes and travel bans on named individuals and entities developed from a growing recognition at the UN level that sanctions against Iraq had, while having depressingly little impact on the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein, literally starved and impoverished countless of his innocent citizens, and the need to find new ways of targeting international terrorism following the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001.

For the best part of the two decades that followed, the UK’s sanctions policy and legal framework were largely based on those of the EU. Its intelligence and security expertise made the UK a key player in EU sanctions policy, but, from the perspective of those affected by sanctions, there was a notable gap in accountability and judicial scrutiny, where what remedies existed lay with the EU’s courts in Luxembourg, under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, or (in rare cases) a bespoke UN ombudsperson system, rather than in the UK’s own courts.

The example of Russia

The political and transnational nature of sanctions may help explain, if not excuse, the extent to which they sometimes fail to reflect moral values. Few would argue now with the proposition that the response of Europe to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, and its initial incursion into Ukraine in 2014, was wholly inadequate. The political context was a benevolent environment for Russian businesses, expatriates and investors in Europe, especially the UK (and, to at least an equal degree, its CDs and OTs) and a small but conspicuous handful of political allies and donors with ties to Russia.

During this period, the UK was, in the years of its new Labour, David Cameron and Theresa May governments, intensely relaxed about the entry of Russians and their money into its economy (including, most conspicuously, the London property market). Notably, this was despite widespread misgivings that some of it may derive from economic crime (or, more neutrally, the more maverick iterations of “shock treatment” capitalism) seen in Russia since the fall of the USSR, and a set of anti-money laundering (AML) laws that (on paper, at least) was among the most draconian in the world.

Brexit

The UK’s sanctions framework was one of a vast number of issues that fell to be considered in the context of Brexit, and in which (with the UK’s rhetoric talking up the importance of exiting the jurisdiction of EU courts) its parliamentary drafters busied themselves with legislation designed for a “no-deal” outcome to negotiations. The Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 (SAMLA) effectively took control of all aspects of decision-making in sanctions (and in AML laws, which similarly had been derived from EU directives).

Notably, having taken control, SAMLA largely ceded it to the Secretary of State – in practice, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) – which would produce separate sets of sanctions regulations and designations for each regime, albeit with at least some degree of parliamentary scrutiny. In the first instance, these would mirror the EU’s regimes. But, even as the UK exited that system, it began creating new ones: inspired by the legacy of Sergey Magnitsky (the Russian prisoner who was tortured and killed after investigating corruption), the then Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, signed off regimes targeting corruption and human rights abuses.

The aims and the means

A glance at the purposes for which (other than compliance with UN or other international obligations) ministers can impose sanctions, as set out in Section 1(2) of SAMLA, provides a high-level insight into their intended moral dimension, and the trust placed in ministers to impose them for purposes that will (in their view):

• further the prevention of terrorism;
• be in the interests of national or international peace and security;
• promote the resolution of armed conflicts or the protection of civilians in conflict zones;
• provide accountability for or be a deterrent to gross violations of human rights, or otherwise promote compliance with international human rights law or respect for human rights;
• promote compliance with international humanitarian law;
• contribute to multilateral efforts to prevent the spread and use of weapons and materials of mass destruction; or
• promote respect for democracy, the rule of law, and good governance.

Also included in the list (at Section 1(2)(d)), however, is the very commonly used additional purpose of “furthering a foreign policy objective” of the UK government. Potentially at least, that would serve the same sort of lofty and benevolent goals that are spelt out in the rest of Section 1(2) – but not necessarily.

The framework of SAMLA is also revealing of the breadth of measures ministers, having identified such purposes are worth pursuing, can take in the interest of pursuing them. Section 11 enables the designation of persons by reference to their suspected involvement in a “specified activity” (or because they are owned or controlled by, acting on behalf of, or associated with someone so involved). Other parts of SAMLA (Section 3(1)(b)(ii) for financial services, Schedule 1 for goods and services) enable the prohibition of any or all transactions involving specified countries or persons connected with them. The definitions of these activities, and of what it means to be “owned” or “controlled” by, or “associated” with persons, or to be “connected” with a country, are left to ministers to decide.

The Magnitsky legacy

The two Magnitsky regimes are expressed to have “global” reach, which means that neither includes (for the time being) financial or trade sanctions that are expressed in terms of “specified countries”. Instead, the “involved persons” targeted by these regimes are:

• (in the case of the anti-corruption regime) those who are or have been involved in bribery of, or misappropriation of assets by, foreign public officials;
• (in the case of the human rights regime) those who are or have been involved in acts that would, if done by a state party to the ECHR, constitute breaches of its Articles 2 (the right to life), 3 (freedom from torture or inhuman or degrading treatment), or 4 (freedom from slavery or forced labour); and
• (in both regimes) those who are or have been involved in a broad range of related activity, including facilitating, supporting, concealing evidence of, or profiting from such conduct, or even being responsible for investigating or prosecuting it and (intentionally or recklessly) failing to do so.

Ukraine: a game changer

This was the backdrop to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which prompted a huge expansion of the UK’s sanctions framework in general, and of the Russia regulations in particular. The expansion is so significant that the Russian regime already bears little resemblance to either its pre-2022 version or the UK’s other sanctions regimes.

The first step, ushered through parliament by the government of Boris Johnson, but with the enthusiastic support of Sir Keir Starmer (then leader of the opposition, later prime minister), was to amend SAMLA in various ways, all of which were designed to make life easier for the FCDO to make regulations and decisions, and harder for designated persons (DPs) and others to live with or challenge them. They included:

• removal of most elements of parliamentary scrutiny, including the requirement for the FCDO to report to parliament when amending regulations;
• removal of the need for designations to be “appropriate” (though the courts have since confirmed that they would still need to be “proportionate” under human rights laws);
• restriction of damages in favour of DPs who successfully challenged their designations, to cases where the courts found bad faith on the FCDO’s part; and
• the creation of “strict liability” monetary penalties for financial sanctions breaches.

Targeting Russia

Notably, these changes were included in a piece of primary legislation primarily aimed at economic crime. The rhetoric in parliament from Johnson and Starmer alike made striking links between the two, with Starmer keen to press the point that Johnson’s government had benefited (he said) from money “stolen from the Russian people”.

By this time, the criteria for designations under the Russian regime had also been vastly expanded to include not just those actively involved in challenging Ukraine’s territorial integrity or sovereignty but also anyone involved in sectors of the Russian economy deemed economically or strategically significant. In terms of SAMLA’s Section 11, the (present or past) involvement in such sectors was deemed to be a “specified activity”, while the definition of “associated” was later expanded to include, among others, close family members.

Rationale and risks

Any expectation that sanctions laws would define “specified activity” or “association” in a way that connoted moral blame or knowing involvement in the activity of the government that had been defined as problematic was arguably abandoned (at least in legal terms) in making these amendments. Rather than designating people who were themselves part of the problem (here, the invasion of Ukraine), Russia’s sanctions were now aimed primarily at damaging the Russian economy, using those who were (or had been) involved in Russian business, and their family members, as a means to that end.

The early examples of the Sanctions Designation Forms (SDFs) provided to DPs seemed to suggest that the FCDO believed that the assets of Russian “oligarchs” – a term that appears to be broadly applied to anyone with significant business interests in Russia – were held at the request or under the direction of the Russian government. However, over time, the FCDO appeared to adopt a more relaxed stance, indicating that the primary goal of these designations was to cause economic harm to Russia, regardless of whether the designated persons had any genuine influence over the Russian government.

Despite this legal shift, the popular view and policy agenda towards Russia has remained influenced by a conflation of sanctions (as a means of tackling the actions of its government) with economic crime (which connotes a moral judgment about activities and/or the derivation of property). Perhaps the starkest illustration of this lies in the combined AML/sanctions compliance functions of banks and other regulated businesses – which, since 2022 (if not before), have reflexively treated any customer who does business or resides in Russia as “suspect”, and, in many cases, Russian citizens as a class. Rightly or wrongly, Russians’ money is often treated as “dirty” until proven otherwise.

Challenges to designations

For those who had thought that DPs would have a better prospect of challenging their designations at the High Court in London than at the EU courts in Luxembourg, the two-stage process of ministerial reviews followed by court reviews under SAMLA (Sections 23 and 38 respectively) has been a disappointment. Generally, the process of obtaining a DP’s SDF and awaiting a ministerial decision has been slow, and there has been a predictable tendency for the FCDO to adhere to its original decisions.

Variations in the evidential basis for designations, while arguably demonstrating a principled approach to the process, have presented additional challenges and contributed to a sense of “moving goalposts”. Worse, UK courts up to and including the Supreme Court (the leading authority from the latter being the decisively unsuccessful challenge brought by Eugene Shvidler) have demonstrated extreme deference to the “institutional expertise” of the FCDO in matters relevant to the proportionality exercise, which has been assessed at an aggregate level rather than with reference to the individual circumstances of the DP concerned.

Targeting trade

While few, perhaps, have much sympathy for those labelled (rightly or not) as “oligarchs”, the scope of the Russia regulations has meanwhile expanded to affect the provision of goods and services to “persons connected with Russia” (PCWRs), which the regulations have defined to mean, broadly speaking, individuals residing there and companies incorporated or domiciled there.

The trend is particularly pernicious in the context of professional services, where the chilling effect of sanctions effectively creates a hostile environment for an entire population, and a toxic (albeit understandable) reluctance among professionals to take the risk of (or to jump through the administrative hurdles involved in) continuing to work for them. These services, of course, are otherwise entirely lawful and available to clients without discrimination.

Forfeiture?

Early rhetoric from the Johnson government about restricting Russians’ access to UK bank accounts has so far not been translated into law, but the trend of expanding designation criteria and service restrictions into ever greater categories of people is not encouraging. In parallel with this, debates continue about the prospect of forfeiting Russian assets, apparently without much care to distinguish between assets belonging to the Russian state and those belonging to private parties.

An obligation on DPs (on the Russia and Belarus lists) to report their assets (with fines of up to half the value of the assets available if reports are not accurately filed) suggests one option for effectively transitioning from freezing of assets to seizing (or forfeiting) them. Another option may be the use of proceeds of crime laws, which (on an extreme basis) may be presumed to apply to anyone in possession of money who has also ever had an interest in Russian business. In the context of measures intended to protect the values of liberal democracy against arbitrary authoritarianism, any drift in law or rhetoric that makes such assumptions, or is so ready to impose such discriminatory restrictions on an entire population, needs to be treated with scepticism.

A broadening agenda

The experience of Russia (and Belarus) sanctions’ expansion since 2022 would appear to have emboldened the UK government to make greater use of sanctions as a tool, including for purposes that would traditionally be considered part of a criminal law enforcement agenda, and in foreign policy contexts that are often controversial. At the time of publication of this guide (13 August 2026), examples include:

• continued use of the anti-corruption regime to target those suspected of involvement in overseas bribery and/or misappropriation of public assets, sometimes in conjunction with proceeds of crime laws;
• use of the human rights regime to tackle a diverse range of issues, including the involvement of the Chinese government in persecution of the Uyghur population of Xinjiang province, gender-based violence against women and girls in Iran, Syria and elsewhere, overseas “scam centres” using forced labour to commit fraud, suspected violent settlors of Palestinian territories in Israel, and (controversially) certain members of the Israeli government; and
• a new regime targeting those involved in irregular immigration, including the transport of asylum seekers across the Channel in small boats.

Scaling back

The scaling back of sanctions against Syria in the UK and other countries illustrates how foreign policy priorities can influence the treatment of different parties. Some groups, which have faced sanctions or been designated under terrorism legislation at various points, continued to be sanctioned due to their past actions. In contrast, other groups seemed to be pardoned for similar conduct.

Scaling back of sanctions inevitably tests how non-state actors (particularly businesses in sanctioning countries) respond to situations of continued volatility and risk, notwithstanding the relative speed of governments’ policy changes and amendments to legal provisions. The prime historic example is Iran, for which sanctions relief (in return for monitored progress on nuclear non-proliferation) was limited in practice due to scepticism (well-founded, as matters transpired) about its durability from industry in general and the financial sector in particular.

The tentative nature of sanctions relief is sometimes expressed in the form of general licences (with or without explicit time limits, but often expressly on the basis that they can be revoked at any time) rather than delistings or revocations. The United States’ approach to Venezuela, after forcibly removing its president and reaching an apparently far-reaching accommodation with his replacement, notably adopted this form of relief. The UK (presumably having too little involvement in Venezuelan business either to incentivise a resurgence or to exercise influence on US actions) appears to have been slow to follow its lead.

The challenge of Iran

At the time of publication of this guide, the UK’s approach to one sanctions-related dilemma appears to be at something of a “pinch point”. Historically, the UK has sided with European partners rather than the US on the question of how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while the two countries’ stance on the regime’s human rights record (also expressed via sanctions) has been relatively strong (if tempered in the UK’s case, by a long-standing reluctance to proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation).

The United States’ decision to join Israel in carrying out air strikes against Iran from 28 February 2026 prompted a new schism between it and the UK (among other allies), and a significant dilemma with respect to sanctions. In undertaking to lift all restrictive measures (including those at UN level) in its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran, the US administration seems ready to set aside a decades-long international strategy of economic pressure, aimed at tackling Iran’s lamentable human rights record as well as its non-compliance with the NPT.

The MoU undertaking arguably fits into a pattern of US actions that clearly favour a more varied, immediate and changeable range of methods against various countries (ranging from tariffs and threats towards traditional allies, via comprehensive sanctions against Cuba, to direct military action and, in the case of Iran, a naval blockade), while using sanctions against unconventional targets (including the ICC). In dealing only temporarily with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, it suggests agnosticism towards the principle of freedom of navigation, with hints from the president that the issue may be dealt with pragmatically by some sort of shared toll regime. Finally, it seems to downgrade the importance of human rights in so far as it leaves little or no leverage (and none via sanctions) to achieving change in that sphere.

Will the UK follow suit and relax its own sanctions against Iran? To do so would imply an agreement with the aims and methods of the US administration in this conflict, arguably not in keeping with its recent actions. Not to do so could do further damage to a fundamentally important principle of sanctions, that they work far better when sanctioning allies are in lockstep with each other than when they break ranks and attempt to assert unilateral positions. 

“The right thing”?

The context of all these creative uses of and changes in sanctions regimes, in the UK as elsewhere, is the government’s appeal to moral values (and to its related agendas in AML compliance and economic crime) to justify the imposition of restrictive measures on those targeted, and indeed the removal of those restrictions when circumstances change. Sustaining this can be particularly challenging when politics come into play. Reasonable arguments can emerge both domestically and internationally – not only between those who target others and those who are being targeted, but also among governments that have historically aligned with one another.

Looking to the future, while at the time of publication of this guide, the prospect of positive changes in international trouble spots seems remote, perhaps the volatility of international events will prompt ministers in the UK and elsewhere to reflect on how sanctions are applied and expressed. We may have a broad consensus in the UK that the activities, connections, and finances of certain categories of people are to be treated as “wrong” or “suspect”, and that “the right thing” to do is to avoid dealing with them altogether. However, this consensus is as fragile as the categories are fungible. Certainly, it does not compare to more long-standing (and democratically influenced) judgments from criminal or public international law, to which ministers often appeal when sanctions are deployed.

On that basis, the “right thing” is to be mindful, while respecting and complying with whatever sanctions laws say from time to time, that the categories of people affected by sanctions are dictated by judgments of politics, not morality or law. In the UK today, these categories include a selection (arguably arbitrary, certainly small) of people said to have been involved in corruption or human rights abuses around the world, alongside (for some purposes anyway) the entire populations of Russia, Belarus and Iran, most of whom cannot reasonably be blamed for anything. Tomorrow, we may be prompted, perhaps by changes in the US administration’s policies rather than our own democratic process, to take a different view entirely about these categories and people.

Such views, and changes in views, may reflect our own (and the population’s) moral judgements, or they may not. But as sanctions are, first and foremost, a political tool, the presence of contradictions, hypocrisies, and selective judgments in them should not come as a great surprise. A specific combination of domestic and international events has prompted the UK government to expand the use of sanctions to target conduct and individuals it deems problematic. This approach warrants evaluation not only in terms of effectiveness but also in terms of its constitutional legitimacy. From the government’s perspective, increasing the use of a legal framework that allows ministers to define problems and then decide whom to target and how to address them may self-evidently appear to be the right thing to do. From the perspective of those whose votes helped put those ministers in those positions, there is no obligation to agree.