US sanctions against Iran are turning into a major humanitarian problem. causing major hardship for average Iranians and medicine shortages in hospitals. Each week the US imposes more sanctions on commerce, forcing Iranians to find new ways to keep vital goods flowing.
So late last week, hopeful to keep getting paid for natural gas exports to major trading partner Turkey and facing banking sanctions that make any trade in any government currency all but impossible, Iran started trading in gold with Turkey.
Since gold is a physical currency and not a paper money, the US can’t really do anything about it. At least that’s what Iran and Turkey think. The US State Department is pretty sure they can, however, and is threatening Turkey over possible “sanctionable transactions.”
Energy Minister Taner Yildiz, fresh off his unsuccessful attempted visit to Iraqi Kurdistan, shrugged off the threat insisting that the US can’t sanction trades of gold for natural gas and that Turkey is just going to keep doing it no matter how much the US complains.
The trade is several billion dollars, making gold an ideal means of exchange. Average Iranians dealing in smaller transactions don’t have this luxury, but they’re not giving up either, moving toward virtual currency Bitcoin. Since transaction in Bitcoin aren’t even hypothetically trackable, this makes them entirely unsanctionable. This is only an option for smaller deals, however, as the sum of all Bitcoins is far short of what would be needed for major international commerce.
great! ban all weapons transfers and withdraw all military assets
When are these Muslim nations going to tell the U.S. to get stuffed and move its sorry ass out of the Middle East and go home.
The arrogance of the U.S. is sickening. It's too big for its britches! It needs to be treated as what it is: a moronic bully!
It will happen only when a REAL Muslim will be elected by the REAL mslim public in a very very REAL world.til then we can all only wish the lessing of troubles of individuals in those so called MUSLIM with not much ISLAM in those countries.
The US might force the word back onto a gold standard. That would quickly result in a total US economic end..
"Since transaction in Bitcoin aren’t even hypothetically trackable"
Whoa, read up on Bitcoin before you spout such dangerous nonsense. The Bitcoin protocol works *because* all transactions are publicly tracked.
Staying anonymous using Bitcoin is possible but requires utmost discipline (for all eternity after the transaction) — it is not built-in.
One hopes Turkey tells US to piss off.
Not gonna happen soon. The US has strategic interests in Turkey. Turkish politicians have pork and brown envelope interests in the US. A problematic marriage but it might hold…
You betcha this makes the U.S. government nervous. If people stop using the dollar, its status as the reserve currency ends, and with it the U.S. empire.
Its vital that Madeline Albright's record of children's' deaths due to sanctions is significantly exceed while Hilary Clinton is Secretary of State to support her fundraising efforts to fuel her 2016 Presidential campaign.
While on the other side, they arm Turkey with missiles. Which one of those faces shall we believe is the real one?
Oh dear. Stop using a fiscally sound method of payments for the phony petro dollars, eh? One can see they fear countries walking away from this faux currency.
The US has much influence in Turkey and despite that, several Turkish groups have also ceded to the call of the UN on behest of US backing. Even Red Cross are not allowed to go into Iran due to citation of safety reasons.