It’s Monday and that means a new round of Iran sanctions. The virtually weekly ritual of President Obama or the Treasury Department announcing a new round of sanctions took place today, with announcements of large-scale sanctions against anyone involved in Iran’s auto industry and anyone caught using Iran’s currency, the rial, for “significant transactions.”
Officials from the Obama Administration say that “the objective is to take aim at the rial and to make it as unusable a currency as possible, which is all part and parcel of our efforts to apply significant financial pressure on the government of Iran.”
The move against the auto industry makes sense in this regard because it is Iran’s second largest industry, after petrochemicals. The efforts seem to be targeting Iranian civilians however, which the administration has long insisted was not their goal.
Indeed, Iran’s government has long since stopped using the rial as a currency of account for overseas transactions, preferred to use gold ever since banking sanctions precluded the use of anything else. The US has promised to sanction the gold trade, but the practicality of banning trade in a metal seems dubious at best.
Oh what a nice man.., a nice man whom they gave him the noble peace price.., I mean prize.., always have a agenda to please those whom rules.
What a saint! He's talking water and drinking blood.
Obamas track-record of threads, lies, deceptions and cover-ups makes "Tricky Dick" Nixon blush.
Quote from the article: "Officials from the Obama Administration say that “the objective is to take aim at the rial and to make it as unusable a currency as possible, which is all part and parcel of our efforts to apply significant financial pressure on the government of Iran.”
This is nothing short of state terrorism on the side of Obama, and a declaration of war against Iran.
But Obama should beware: Iran is a signatory state of the UN-ICC in the Hague and might act accordingly, i.e. indict Obama for crimes against humanity.
I would.
Isn't the Hague court a NATO court rather than a court of Justice ?
Leave the Iranian people alone! What a freaking bully! It's not enough to overthrow their first democratically elected parliament and install a tyrannical king and torturing police force, but when they somehow manage to overcome these things, you have to keep waging terror against them through war crime, genocidal sanctions.
I voted for change and all I got was a stupid t-shirt.
The election in Iran is proving that 2009 was a glorious revolution compared to what’s going on now with the arrests of prominent dissidents, the shutdown of news media, the whittling down of eligible presidential candidates from 680 to just 8, the blockade of social media sites, reduction in bandwidth and other human rights violations.
But what matters most is that on June 14, nothing will have changed in Iran with a despotic regime headed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei still firmly in control and calling the shots.
The secret nuclear weaponry program will continue and the Iranian regime will pursue its ambitions by meddling in Iraq and Syria and Lebanon to set up an Islamic Empire in the region, which will mean more executions in Iran and a major threat for peace and tranquility in the region.
While these sanctions may or may not have the desired effect, the only peaceful solution to this problem is to support change from within Iran.
The West needs to help engage and support the main opposition groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (www.ncr-iran.org) and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (www.mojahedin.org) , as well as non-governmental groups such as Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org) in pushing for a peaceful change in the Iranian government.
This is called a declaration of war and yet the Congress rubs its hands and acts as though it's powerless…. Well, maybe it really is or maybe it wants what Obama wants without saying so.