U.S. actions related to North Korea and Iran brought a timely focus to the first Herman Brown lecture Thursday night.

Cooper Drury, a professor and chair of Political Science at the University of Missouri, spoke about the consequences of economic sanctions to about 40 attendees at the inaugural Herman Brown Lecture in the Palko Building.

Drury defined sanctions as economic pain used to force a country to change their political position and demonstrated two options for U.S. sanctions with North Korea and Iran: engagement or containment.

With North Korea, Drury said, previous U.S. attempts to engage or help develop the country in order to stem weapon development have failed.

Since this failure, the U.S. and its allies have ignored North Korea and stopped all relations with the country, leaving it “effectively contained,” Drury said.

While North Korea was used as a successful example of containment, Drury used Iran as an example of engagement.

Drury said that Iran couldn’t be contained because it has vast oil resources unlike North Korea, which has no resources vital to American interests.

He suggested that loosening sanctions on Iran could open up “bargaining space.”

Drury explained how the purpose of sanctions within the last 30 years has been to promote human rights and democracy.

However, Drury said that the economically and socially weak, are the hardest hit by economic sanctions. Protests, domestic violence, an increased crime rate and the erosion of women’s rights can be the unintended consequences of sanctions, he said.

Seth Block, a senior political science major using Drury’s research for a paper, said the lecture was interesting and informative.

“I didn’t know about how women’s rights are affected dramatically [by economic sanctions],” Block said.

Manochehr Dorraj, a political science professor at TCU, said he thought the lecture was timely in relation to current issues. For example, President Obama threatened to veto additional sanctions on Iran in his State of the Union speech earlier this week.

Drury said that he hoped attendees left with “a greater understanding of the consequences sanctions have and the complexity of dealing with these ‘rogue’ countries.”

The lecture will be an annual event, according to James Scott, professor in the political science department and Herman Brown Chair.