The Dissident reports from the World Economic Forum (WEF):

At The WEF, Scott Bessent Says The Quiet Part Out Loud About Sanctions On Iran.

According to Bessent: This is economic statecraft, no shots fired, and things are moving in a very positive way here.

Translation: We can kill more of your people through sanctions without any of ours getting killed.

Sanctions are the new chokepoint - along with energy and internet cables - and they primarily impact civilians.

A study published in The Lancet indicates that sanctions can cause as many deaths as armed conflicts, with estimates suggesting that they lead to over half a million deaths annually.

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext]

Our findings showed a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. We found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas we found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions. Mortality effects ranged from 8·4 log points (95% CI 3·9–13·0) for children younger than 5 years to 2·4 log points (0·9–4·0) for individuals aged 60–80 years. We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.

The main purpose of sanctions is to provoke regime change relatively cheaply - albeit with some 'collateral damage'.

It is nothing to do with democracy and all about installing a compliant puppet government in the target country.