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Abstract
This manuscript examines the factors affecting bilateral trade between the targets of economic sanctions and third party states. Particularly, it examines how the relationships between third party states and the sanctions primary sender and the third party states relationships with the target state can each encourage or discourage trade. Through the use of a triadic approach, this piece investigates whether economic or political factors play a more determinative role in shaping how third party states respond to economic conflict between the sender and target. The paper quantitatively tests the competing liberal, realist, and economic explanations for states trading behavior using observations from eight different U.S.-sponsored sanctions cases. It further conducts an in-depth case study on the United Arab Emirates sanctions-busting activities on behalf of Iran. The analysis reveals strong supportive evidence for the economic and liberal explanations of states trading behavior and contradictory evidence for realist and security-based explanations.