US Disarmament Ambassador Robert Woods announced today that the US will continue its campaign against Iran, and will continue to look for ways to impose new sanctions
against them. This announcement came a day after the US sanctioned the
Iranian Supreme Leader and a handful of other individuals.
Future sanctions are going to be no small challenge for the US, as
sanctions have hit so much of the Iranian economy already that there just isn’t much left to conceivably go after. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo bragged over the weekend that “some 80-plus percent of the Iranian economy is sanctioned.”
That is why a lot of sanctions announced recently target individuals of
note, and not industries. Other than very specific parts of Iran’s
economy, like basic food and medicine, cannot under US law be directly
sanctioned, and anything that can be sanctioned was long ago.
But even there, it’s tough to argue that anything really escapes US
sanctions as it is, because US banking sanctions are so absolute that
they scare off foreign companies from perfectly legal transactions,
fearing the US will punish them.
The World Court has even hit the US for not ensuring that their sanctions aren’t blocking humanitarian aid into
Iran. This too is a subject that has been a big deal in recent years,
with US sanctions blocking certain aid during recent flooding.
But sanctions that are conceivably offerable are virtually useless since
the US and Iran already aren’t doing business. Officials underscored
that mocking sanctions against the Supreme Leader, noting he never
travels to the US in the first place, and has no assets in the US.
So when will the devil whisper into Trump’s ear to blockade Iranian tankers shipping oil to China. That will be the day we are dammed and our total hypocrisy exposed.
I always ask – “What the Hell did Iran do to deserve our hatred? –other than be a check upon Israeli domination of the Mid East. To me, blocking Israeli imperialism and its genocidal aims is certainly a “crime” more worthy of applause than punishment.
I wonder whether the large international banks have set up special divisions to keep track whether their transactions are kosher according to Trump’s demands.
When the US economy tanks and the dollar dies the country will need a lot of foreign aid to survive. This is when their sanctions policy across the world will come back to haunt them, when foreign populations demand their governments do nothing to alleviate US suffering.
*the suffering of the majority of Americans. Trump and the other politicians and neolib billionaires will be fine, it’ll be the rest of us dealing with shrinking food stocks and an inflationary economy.