The US has announced a new round of sanctions against Iran, targeting 8 high ranking Iranian officials and 17 Iranian mining companies. The Treasury Department also reported sanctions on Chinese and Seychelles companies.
Officials emphasized this as part of the “maximum pressure campaign,” and while they insisted this was a particularly big new set of sanctions, as usual, it seems much of it was already sanctioned.
High ranking Iranian commander and political official Mohsen Rezaie was among the “new” sanctionees, and mocked it as “symbolic for America” and without any economic impact, adding that he’s proud to be sanctioned.
Rezaie has been proud for awhile. The Treasury Department ordered his assets frozen in 2007, and he’s been a “listed person” a few other times in sanctions. It is unclear if there is any practical difference between all these different rounds of sanctions, but clearly Rezaei doesn’t believe so, and in practice, it’s common for the US to single out big names to sanction, and keeps sanctioning them over and over whether they are already on the list or not.
The rest of the world has had quite enough of US sanctions. Europe and the rest of Eurasia will continue to deal with Iran and eventually push the USA and Israel out of the picture. Trade agreements like the new Belt and Road initiative will make the dollar optional along with other currencies. It’ll be the end of our bullying and threatening to get our way in the world. It will also be the end of the Anglo-Zionist Empire. It can’t happen soon enough.
True. At some point, the need to do business with Iran will exceed the cost of U.S. sanctions and the black trade won’t be enough.
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China, or maybe even Europe will break and say, the heck with it, we’ll do business with whomever we want, and the U.S. can just try and live without our business.
It may take a few more decades, but the Eurasian economy will eventually matter more then the U.S. consumer market, and the non-U.S. Americas will be hard up if left behind.
… There’s… something left to sanction?
The U.S. won’t cut off black market links. Sanctions have been good for that and the most likely vector of U.S./Israeli influence inside Iran.