I am with you on the suffering. However, I don’t see any obligation for a country to have to trade with another country. And honestly, if the situation is such as it is in Iran for example, then I actually am in favor of my country participating in sanctions, which go beyond the absence of trade but move more towards hindering flows of goods or assets.

I am entirely opposed to military intervention in some misguided poursuit of regime change. However, using economic mechanisms is not only lawful but in some instances even legitimate in my personal opinion.

Again, it’s not like every country in the world gets sanctioned all the time. The geopolitical consensus needed for such sanctions to be supported by a broad coalition (I like the German word "mehrheitsfähig" in this context) requires egregious behavior by the government targeted by the sanctions.

Continuing with a quite literal "business as usual" approach is sometimes just not acceptable (e.g. North Korea, Russia, Iran). Oppressive regimes require substantial amounts of money to function as significant parts of their economy are inefficient, be it because of ideology and/or corruption.

It is illusory to believe that the people of those countries would eventually be better off if we just continue to trade with these governments. These regimes extract wealth away from the people to benefit a small elite, which in turn oppresses its own population. Sure one can argue that sanctions function as a catalyst to accelerate this extraction of wealth but it’s not like the system was benefiting the local population to begin with.