With Iran growing increasingly disillusioned with the P5+1 nuclear deal, citing Europe’s failure to come through with a promised mechanism to allow European companies to keep trading with Iran, the European Union announced Friday that the mechanism, called INSTEX, is now up and running.
INSTEX functions as a clearing house, allowing European companies to do business with Iran without having to involve banks. This is important because large banks are overwhelmingly too scared of US retaliation to finance trade.
Today’s launch is many months after INSTEX was initially expected, which is a big part of why Iran has been complaining about the European Union’s lack of follow-through. That the EU managed to get it online suddenly suggests Iran was not run to believe they were dragging their feet.
US officials are angrily condemning INSTEX, warning that it stands in violation of US policy, and that European businesses should believe it is a “very poor business decision” to use it to trade with Iran.
Iranian officials seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach, saying that what’s been offered so far is “not enough.” This assessment could quickly change, however,if INSTEX turns out to open the flow of trade back and forth between Iran and the EU market.
Good for Europe, lets hope good for the world. Does anyone wonder if the recent boom in bitcoin has any relation to Iran? Couldn’t they trade in bitcoin? Isn’t that one of the points of bitcoin? Just curious.
While it’s not impossible, the busts and booms of crypto currencies, their many causes and reasons to do so, are well documented. In any case, stability would be key for it to become a factor for trade or any national economy to build upon. Stability and (slow) inflation are what most economies require from their currency or trade “gold”.
INSTEX is offering exactly that: probably a complex of guarantees, buffering, audited bookkeeping and insurances designed to provide trust and legal cover for larger corporations and governments to get down to business
The US could declare INSTEX as a whole to be an illegal instrument of some kind but that could become a case for WTO or Worldbank to rule over. Which will take time but there’s always room for more “threats”.
Yes, let’s hope that this big FU to Bolton, Pompeo and the other warmongers works out. Trump should put the entire lot of them to the wall in front of a firing squad. Does he have the balls to do it?
And Trump should be put against that same wall.
“was not run”s/b “was not wrong”. – Grammar Nazi
Again, none of this matters. The US will just slap sanctions on individual companies in the EU that the US detects trading with Iran, regardless of whether they use banks or INSTEX or any other means of trade. And most companies in the EU probably know that will happen, so they’re unlikely to want to be the first to get hit, unless the monetary rewards outweigh the risk.
This whole business of unilateral sanctions by the bully on the block needs to be addressed in international law and the UN. But that’s unlikely to change any time soon.
“Cornelius Adebahr from the German Council on Foreign Relations said
companies that will be involved in INSTEX represent: “a very reduced
target group. It’s not about giant sums in the billions.””
This will be pocket change to drag Iran into staying with the deal still without serious sanctions relief. The only real solution would be the EU threatening and then implementing trade sanctions against the US for their aggression towards Iran.