Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti says complying with the European Union sanctions against Iran will cause many problems for the country’s ailing economy.
Speaking to reporters in a joint press conference with the president of the European Parliament, Martin Shulz, in Rome, Monti noted that Italy is grappling with serious economic recession and crisis and cutting Iran oil imports will cause the country to suffer more than other EU members.
The Italian premier added that due to heavy dependence on energy, Italy feels the pinch of Iran oil sanctions more than other European countries, but Rome is unable to disobey certain decisions.
Meanwhile, the Italian official news agency, ANSA, published a report quoting energy experts as saying that sanctions against Iran are useless and will only harm Italian and other European companies.
Referring to high trade volume between Tehran and Rome, the report added that given the existing economic crisis in Europe, compliance with sanctions may be an end to the longstanding presence of Italian companies in Iran, which will be replaced with Turkish and Chinese companies.
ANSA further stated that complying with Iran sanctions will also cost Italians 30,000 jobs.
On January 23, EU Foreign Ministers met in Belgium to approve new sanctions against Iran aimed at banning member countries from importing Iranian crude oil and carrying out transactions with its central bank.
The EU has considered a period of six months before sanctions are fully enforced in order to allow member states to adapt to new conditions and find new sources of crude oil.
EU decision followed imposition of similar sanctions by Washington on Iranian energy and financial sectors on the New Year’s Eve which seek to penalize other countries for buying Iran oil or dealing with the its central bank.
After approving new sanctions, EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, told reporters that the sanctions aim to persuade Tehran to suspend its peaceful nuclear activities and get back to negotiating table with P5+1 — comprising US, UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany.
The United States, Israel and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program, using this pretext to impose sanctions against Iran and threaten the country with military attack.
Iran has refuted the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and member of IAEA, it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful use.
The IAEA has never found any evidence indicating that Tehran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted towards nuclear weapons production.
February 25, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Wars for Israel | European Union, Mario Monti, Sanctions against Iran, U.S. sanctions against Iran |
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The British government has claimed the allegations by London and its western allies that Iran is covertly pursuing a military nuclear program are evidence-based.
London’s claim is diametrically opposed even to the anti-Iranian report by the UN nuclear watchdog’s chief that confirmed no evidence is yet available to support claims of a military side to Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities.
After Iran announced several breakthroughs in its civilian nuclear program on Wednesday, a British Foreign Office spokesman said the international concerns about Iran’s activities are “well-founded”.
“[The nuclear news from Iran] does not give any confidence that Iran is ready to engage meaningfully on the international community’s well-founded concerns about its nuclear programme,” a Foreign Office spokesman said.
However, the spokesman did not explain based on what evidence the western concerns could be described as “well-founded.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency accused Tehran of pursuing military nuclear ambitions in its latest safeguards report published in November.
Even in that report, the IAEA talked of “possible” military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.
It, nevertheless, drew condemnations from Iran and independent analysts who described the report as “biased” and “political” as it presented ‘no’ evidence to support the claim.
In reaction to the report, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the report is “a compilation of well-known facts that have intentionally been given a politicized intonation.”
The statement said the authors “resort to assumptions and suspicions, and juggle information with the purpose of creating the impression that the Iranian nuclear program has a military component.”
Russia accordingly dismissed calls led by the US for harsher UN Security Council sanctions against Iran saying more embargoes would be “an instrument of regime changes in Tehran.”
Following Russian and Chinese resistance to strong sanctions, the US and its European allies moved to impose unilateral sanctions on Iran on an arbitrary basis and outside the framework of international law.
This comes as the British Foreign Office spokesman who talked of “well-founded” concerns on Iran claimed the “peaceful” pressure – that is sanctions – on Iran is legitimate and Britain would continue to support such actions.
“[Until Iran addresses the international community’s concerns] we’ll only increase peaceful and legitimate pressure on Iran to return to negotiations,” the spokesman said.
February 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | International Atomic Energy Agency, Sanctions against Iran |
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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.
February 9, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Wars for Israel | Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iran, Sanctions against Iran, South Korea |
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It would be nice if the U.S. kept its word when it signs those international agreements that are in some kind of accord with rights and advance the international maintenance of rights.
The U.S. has not done this with Iran.
The U.S. and Iran signed the Algiers Accords in 1981 to end the hostage crisis. See also here. Point 1 of the accords is titled “Non-Intervention in Iranian Affairs”. It reads (in full):
“The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.”
This is a pragmatically wise policy. Moreover, it is in the direction of respecting the rights of Iranians and also those non-Iranians who have dealings with Iranians. Overall, it is an agreement that settled a potentially explosive situation. It moved toward peace.
It’s too bad that the U.S. didn’t continue the motion toward peace. The U.S. had other ideas.
The U.S. didn’t want to make peace between it and Iran a policy. It wanted to un-do the Iranian Revolution. The U.S. did not follow up the Algiers Accords with further moves toward peace.
It did just the opposite.
The U.S. didn’t keep the bargain. It sided with Iraq after Iraq invaded Iran in 1980. It imposed sanctions in 1984, 1987 and in the 1990s. A review of sanctions is here. The U.S. tried to destabilize the Iranian government, isolate it and keep it out of the World Trade organization. See here.
Economic sanctions enacted by Congress are politically-caused interference. The Senate Banking Committee is about to enact more of these sanctions. Their open aim is “to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions”. This is political interference. This violates the Algiers Accords.
There is a rather long list of measures that the Committee says is “designed to increase pressure on Iran’s government.” The political interference of these sanctions is evident from the latter statement. In addition, the Senate measure directly targets the IRGC (Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps). This is a branch of Iran’s military, with obvious political importance.
The U.S. government is once again violating the Algiers Accords, as it has in the past. However, the U.S. has not officially abrogated the Algiers Accords. It will only do so when it decides it can gain from doing so. It wants to maintain the option, for example, to seize Iranian assets.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is acting hypocritically as explained here by supporting the Accords’ provisions against lawsuits brought by the hostages.
Experiencing the sanctions for decades, observing all this and knowing what happened to Gaddafi, how can Iran trust the word of the U.S.? How can it view the U.S. as anything but a hostile power that is aiming to un-do its revolution? And when Israel, an ally of the U.S., makes strong and plain threats against Iran, what else can Iran think but that the U.S. and Israel are out to get it, not just halt its nuclear program, but overturn it and introduce the regime change that some like Tom Ridge have openly advocated?
The U.S. Banking Committee acknowledges that previous U.S. sanctions haven’t achieved their objective. They say “it is now clear that the steps taken thus far by the international community have not been sufficient to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.”
It has been argued by Lieutenant Colonel George T. Doran of the United States Air Force that economic sanctions are futile. Others have reached similar conclusions after studying many cases of economic sanctions.
It is not hard to understand why economic sanctions might hurt a country’s economy or hurt companies that deal with a sanctioned country but still not cause the leaders of that country’s state to alter a targeted policy or policies. One reason is that the leaders of a state are only indirectly affected by sanctions. They stand in a rather insulated and remote relation to political pressures from below that arise from sanctions. Any country has many political currents of which sanctions are only one. Another is that people in the country may rally around their government. A third reason is that sanctioned countries find ways around the sanctions, using other markets or trades.
Sanctions have other negative effects such as reducing the likelihood of diplomacy, raising the chance of war, raising the chance of retaliation, reducing trade and human exchanges, and driving a state to become isolated and more self-sufficient.
U.S. sanctions are said by the Senate Banking Committee to have slowed Iran’s nuclear program, a program that is allowable and legal under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (another accord that the U.S. has not lived up to), but where is the evidence that this is the case? How could the senators know this when that program has been interfered with by computer viruses introduced from without and from assassinations of nuclear scientists?
And even if Iran’s peaceful nuclear program has been slowed by sanctions, what does that mean when we consider the objectives of the U.S. government? If Iran appears still to be achieving its objective but on a slower time frame, does that mean that the U.S. or Israel will ratchet up their actions and start a war to force Iran to stop what sanctions have failed to stop? In other words, once the U.S. has set forth on a path to interfere with Iran politically, if only by sanctions and then stiffer sanctions, it appears to have committed itself to continue on that path, even if the eventual outcome is outright war. That was the outcome in Iraq and Libya.
More and stiffer sanctions will not cause Iran to change its tune, not if the following accurately reflects the views of Iran’s most important leader:
“Khamenei has been described as consistent in his opposition to the United States and the Western World in general, reportedly including this theme into his speeches no matter whether the topic is foreign policy, agriculture or education. He has declared that it is ‘clear that conflict and confrontation between’ Islamic Republic of Iran and the U.S. ‘is something natural and unavoidable’ since the United States ‘is trying to establish a global dictatorship and further its own interests by dominating other nations and trampling on their rights.’ However, while ‘cutting ties with America is among our basic policies,’ and ‘any relations would provide the possibility to the Americans to infiltrate Iran and would pave the way for their intelligence and spy agents,’ Khamenei holds the door open to relations with the U.S. at some future date, saying ‘we have never said that the relations will remain severed forever. Undoubtedly, the day the relations with America prove beneficial for the Iranian nation I will be the first one to approve of that.’ However, in a speech to Iranian students on October 29, 2008, which was quoted on Iranian TV (as translated by MEMRI), Khamenei stated that ‘the Iranian people’s hatred for America is profound. The reason for this [hatred] is the various plots that the U.S. government has concocted against Iran and the Iranian people in the past 50 years. The Americans have not only refused to apologize for their actions, but have continued with their arrogant actions.’”
This passage does not depict a man willing to be humiliated. Why should he back off of a peaceful nuclear program? Why should he implicitly acknowledge a kind of guilt or wrong-doing when Iran is blameless?
If sanctions do not have their intended effect, then war with Iran comes closer. Sanctions should be stopped.
Even forgetting sanctions, Israel is a loose cannon unless restrained by the U.S., or so it appears to us who are not privy to the secret communications between these two governments.
The situation is dangerous and getting more dangerous. Stop the sanctions against Iran. Sit on Israel. Shift onto the road to peace. Get off the road to war.
Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free e-book The U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.
February 2, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular | Algiers Accords, Iran, Israel, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
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Sri Lanka has lashed out at the recent US-backed sanctions targeting the Iranian energy sector, stressing that the bans will inflict heavy losses on the country’s economy.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse said Tuesday that the island’s only oil refinery is designed to work with Iranian light crude and any disruption to oil imports from Iran deals a blow to Colombo.
He also noted that by imposing an embargo on the Iranian oil industry, the US and its Western allies “are not punishing Iran, but us… the small countries.”
On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions which seek to penalize countries importing Iran’s oil or doing transaction with the country’s central bank.
In their latest meeting in Brussels on January 23, EU foreign ministers also imposed new sanctions on Iran which include a ban on purchasing oil from the country, a freeze on the assets of Iran’s Central Bank within the EU, and a ban on the sale of diamonds, gold and other precious metals to Iran.
The United States, Israel and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used this pretext to impose four rounds of international embargos and a series of unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Iran has refuted the allegations, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran has a right to use nuclear technology for peaceful use.
February 1, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Sanctions against Iran |
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Washington’s double-edged sword of policies towards the Islamic Republic is not only exhausting the patience of the Iranian nation but it is provoking the ire of international conscience as well.
Goaded by Washington, EU foreign ministers decided on January 23 to impose a ban on oil imports from Iran under the fickle excuse that the country is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
In a recent stance, Iran has threatened that it would never let a situation prevail where regional states could sell their oil while Iran couldn’t. Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has said, “When there is an absence of Iranian supply, oil prices will soar up dramatically and the western countries are well aware of this fact; However, Iran will never allow itself to land in a situation in which it cannot sell oil but other regional states can.”
It hardly needs saying that such a firm stance on the part of Iran has been given considerable thought and that the European Union should be prepared to face the consequences of their irrationality and blind servitude to Washington.
Earlier Iran had warned that it would close the Strait of Hormuz, a move which, as the IMF has said, “could trigger a much larger price spike including by limiting offsetting supplies from other producers in the region.”
The sanctions on Iran oil, which will be effective in July, will surely have drastic repercussions for the European Union as Iran is mulling banning the sale of oil to Europe, a proactive move which will salvage the country’s economy on the one hand and will also lead to a drastic hike in oil prices on the other.
Undoubtedly, the EU decision to impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports is, as Velayati has said, “a political maneuver,” and that “Iran doesn’t need any favor from any country to sell its oil, because global demand is always there.”
In the long run, Western oil firms and consumers may “emerge the biggest losers.” The IMF has predicted that crude oil prices could rise up to 30 percent namely to over USD 140 per barrel if Iran ever decided to retaliate by halting its oil exports altogether. Saudi Arabia has vowed to fill the gap.
But what if Saudi Arabia is bluffing? What if she cannot make up for the supply deficiency?
At all events, oil is fungible and Iran will easily find its own customers in Asian markets.
Europe has seen better days and now is not surely the best time for the imposition of sanctions on Iran’s oil as they will suffer most. For some European countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece, it will not be really easy to participate in the ban on Iran oil as they largely rely on Iran imports. As for Greece which is receiving oil from Iran on credit, it will be an utterly wrong decision to join other European countries which have secret plans to disintegrate the country.
Much to the chagrin of Washington and the Zionist regime, a number of countries such as China, India, Russia, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea have already refused to abide by the new measures. Russia has slammed the new package of sanctions and in a tough-worded statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the EU move as “deeply erroneous.”
“Under such kind of pressure Iran will make no concessions and no correction of its policy,” it said. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that there was nothing to prove that Iran was trying to build an atomic weapon.
Russia has also warned the West against a US-led invasion of Iran, saying that this would incur a chain reaction and that the catastrophic consequences will affect the entire region.
It is manifest that Iran will do without the EU and will find its customers elsewhere in Asian markets. In other words, Iran will not lose in the passive war of sanctions engineered by Washington.
Indeed, sanctions are to be seen as part of Washington’s policy of coercion to break the back of the Iranian government and bring the nation to its knees. However, it should be noted that Iran has been mercilessly under severe sanctions for over 30 years and that it has turned the sanctions into opportunities to attain self-sufficiency and stand on its feet again. The entire gamut of the sanctions designed and spurred by the US and now followed by the EU is also tailored to suit the interests of Israel, the archenemy of Iran and thus the bosom buddy of Washington.
Ever since its inception, the Islamic Republic has been the target of Washington’s inveterate animosity.
In his book Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq (1993), Alan Friedman reveals how the US government aided the regime of the executed dictator Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran. Ironically, the once good pal of the United States suddenly turned into a parasite to be eliminated from the face of the earth. According to Friedman, Washington generously doled out its assistance in various forms to Iraq including billions of dollars worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-US arms, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and active participation in war against Iran. An Atlanta branch of Italy’s largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro funneled over USD 5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. This piece of information had been concealed by the CIA.
An appalling report revealed that the US government provided Saddam’s regime with chemical weapons. Released on May 25, 1994 by the US Senate Banking Committee, the report detailed the export of pathogenic (‘disease producing’), toxigenic (‘poisonous’), and other biological materials to Iraq after licensing by the US Department of Commerce. The report revealed 70 shipments (including Bacillus anthracis) from the US to Iraq over a span of three years.
The Iraqi regime used the chemical weapons provided by the US against the Iranian combatants and civilians, thus leaving them in a life-in-death situation. Around 100,000 Iranians were affected by nerve and mustard gases, and around one in 10 died before receiving any medical treatment. About five to six thousand are still under medical treatment, of whom around a thousand are critically ill.
The Iranian chemical victims are still dying on a daily basis.
So, Washington’s enmity towards the Islamic Republic goes far beyond its peaceful nuclear program which has constantly been used as a political leverage to stunt the economic and political growth of an anti-imperialism state and prevent the emergence of a Muslim superpower.
The depiction of Iran as a nuclear nightmare and as a global threat is only a saga manufactured by Washington in order to smother a voice so overpoweringly critical of the myriad morbid policies of a government whose American dream is dead and gone.
~
Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.
January 28, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Iran, Sanctions against Iran |
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