China defying sanctions imposed on Iran
By Shabbir Kazmi | January 26, 2013
The recently released data shows Iran’s crude oil exports to China soared to the second highest level in December 2012, despite US-led sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s energy sector.
According to a Reuters report China imported nearly 593,390 barrels per day (bpd) of crude from Iran in December last year, up 3.6 per cent from the preceding year and up 39 per cent from November. For the full year 2012, the highest level of China’s crude imports from Iran stood at 633,000 bpd.
Industry officials in China attributed the enhancement in Iran’s crude oil exports to improvement in shipment. The problems that used to cause delays have been overcome recently. The period of delay has become shorter and overall, less frequent.
Iran is currently China’s third largest supplier of crude, providing Beijing with roughly 12 percent of its total annual oil consumption.
At the beginning of 2012, the United States and the European Union had imposed new sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors with the goal of preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran.
On October 15, 2012, the EU foreign ministers reached an agreement on another round of sanctions against Iran.
Iran terms these impositions illegal and insists that US-engineered sanctions were imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
According to another news report China will soon start importing polyethylene made in Iran, which became possible after the Islamic Republic partially lifted a ban on the export of petrochemicals late last year.
Lately, China-based market sources said that an estimated 100,000-150,000 metric tons of high density polyethylene (HDPE) and low density polyethylene (LDPE) from Iran is expected to arrive in China within a month aboard five vessels. The sources added that the Iranian tanker Touska will shortly discharge HDPE and LDPE at Shanghai port.
On November 6, 2012, Iranian Deputy Oil Minister Abdolhossein Bayat announced that the Oil Ministry had lifted the ban on the export of seven petrochemicals; benzene, styrene monomer, caustic soda, linear alkyl benzene (LAB), melamine crystal, premature ventricular contraction (PVC), and polyethylene.
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Iran designs alternative system for SWIFT
Press TV – May 26, 2012
The Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Mahmoud Bahmani says that the country has designed and implemented a new system for conducting international transactions.
Bahmani said on Saturday that the new system, which has already been activated, would replace Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT)
On March 15, SWIFT CEO Lazaro Campos said in a statement that the society has decided to discontinue offering services to Iranian banks which are subject to financial sanctions imposed by the European Union.
On January 23, the EU foreign ministers approved new sanctions on Iran’s financial and oil sectors, which prevent member countries from importing Iranian crude or dealing with its central bank.
Experts believe that SWIFT’s new action is meant to fully enforce EU sanctions, as global financial transactions are impossible without using SWIFT.
Bahmani rejected reports about a Japanese bank freezing transactions with Iranian banks.
On May 17, the Reuters reported that Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ has frozen USD 2.6 billion of assets of Iranian banks under an order by the New York District Court earlier this month.
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‘Seoul trade with Iran will continue despite sanctions’
Press TV – February 9, 2012
A top official at Korea’s banking sector says Seoul’s trade flow with Iran will not be constricted by western sanctions despite causing a halt in cooperation with Iran’s Bank Tejarat.
“We halted wire transfers of cash to accounts of Bank Tejarat, but this doesn’t hurt exporters at all. Most of exporters take payments from the Central Bank of Iran anyway,” Korea Herald reported Jeon Gwang wook head of the foreign exchange desk at the Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) as saying.
Jeon added that the extended sanctions are unlikely to slow trade flows with Iran as most Korean exporters can still make settlements with Iran’s Central Bank using accounts based on the won (Korea’s national currency).
On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions against Iran, which seek to penalize foreign institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank and oil sector.
Under pressure by US-led sanctions against Tehran, two state-run South Korean banks, Woori Bank and the Industrial Bank of Korea, halted transactions with Iran’s Bank Tejarat as of January 23.
The US demands that Seoul halt trade activities with Iran which would reportedly jeopardize over $7 billion in South Korea’s annual exports and about 10 percent of its crude imports.
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A New Era Of Mass Armies Approaches
BY IAN WELSH | SEPTEMBER 29, 2023
The army, or a part of it at the war college, has perked up and noticed some of the lessons of the Ukraine war, and that it’s a war that the US military could not fight. They’ve missed a lot of things, or felt they couldn’t/shouldn’t write about them, but they’ve figured some stuff out and written about them in a new report, “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force” by Lieutenant Colonel Katie Crombe, and Professor John A. Nagle.
The entire thing is worth reading, but I’m going to pull out three of the main points. The first is that a volunteer US military can’t fight a real war.
The Russia-Ukraine War is exposing significant vulnerabilities in the Army’s strategic personnel depth and ability to withstand and replace casualties.11 Army theater medical planners may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3,600 casualties per day, ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action or suffering disease or other non-battle injuries. With a 25 percent predicted replacement rate, the personnel system will require 800 new personnel each day. For context, the United States sustained about 50,000 casualties in two decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In large-scale combat operations, the United States could experience that same number of casualties in two weeks. (emphasis mine)
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