Penalties one country puts on another, like limits on trade, to pressure it to change what it's doing.
Sanctions can freeze bank accounts, ban trade or block travel, and they're meant to pressure a government without going to war. Whether they change a country's behaviour, or mostly hurt its ordinary people, is often debated.
"New sanctions bar American banks from doing business with the country's oil company."
Filed under the world in the glossary, with every word used on How I Lean.
Nine questions, about three minutes, and you'll see where you lean.