The question is not that of making the Iraqis starve, but something different. Oil accounted for 97% of Iraq's total exports. The countries toward which it exported the most in 1987 are the following (million dollars):

France 998

Germany (Fed. Republic) 401

Italy 1,214

UK 55

Japan 676

USA 526

Brazil 1,436

Turkey 1,154

USSR 1,243

Yugoslavia 429

Because these countries have surely not violated the embargo and because the United Nations' resolution has in any case caused the block of oil transit in the Gulf and in the pipelines, we can infer that Iraqi exports have surely been reduced by at least 97%. The import of consumer goods toward Iraq will probably have been reduced to a much minor extent. But in any case Hussein will very soon no longer be in the conditions of paying wages to its bureaucratic, repressive and military apparatus, and the Iraqi currency will soon have almost no value on the domestic market. This had never happened in the course of the eight years of war against Iran. It is therefore possible that someone, in Iraq, realizes that the international robbery attempted by Hussein has failed, and therefore find a way out.

Apart from this hypothesis there is only war. Instead of a shortage of consumer goods, only death and destruction.