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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran Sanctions Yield Little |
| 2010-04-05 |
| Not supposed to. Euros have too much business with Iran to let sanctions get in the way. Ditto Russia. In its latest proposed set of tougher United Nations sanctions on Iran, the U.S. is again relying on asset freezes as one tool to pressure the country not to build nuclear weapons. But a close look at how much Iranian money has been frozen to date in the U.S. under existing sanctions shows that the total amount is surprisingly small, less than $43 million, or roughly a quarter of what Iran earns in oil revenue in a single day. Other countries also haven't frozen very much, despite freezes implemented by the European Union and the U.N., interviews show. Switzerland, for example, has frozen only about $1.4 million in Iranian assets--a tiny fraction of the $712 million Swiss companies exported to Iran last year. "It's peanuts," says Jeremy P. Carver, a British attorney who has advised governments on implementing sanctions. "It's not going to really change a thing." U.S. officials do not dispute that current amounts of frozen Iranian assets seem small. In some cases, Iran has shifted the money outside the U.S. or EU to avoid sanctions. The officials emphasize that their strategy is not to seize many assets, but to pressure Iran to change its ways by making it extremely difficult for it to do business. "The strategy is not to freeze as many assets as we can," says Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department official who has headed the U.S. sanctions initiative during both the Obama and Bush administrations. "That alone, without the full range of measures we can bring to bear, would be a failing strategy." |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #5 The Loo Sanction? Is that when you get in trouble for going into the Girl's room? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2010-04-05 17:52 |
| #4 How about The Loo Sanction, crosspatch? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2010-04-05 16:57 |
| #3 Sanctions have never produced any real results. 50 years later, the regime in Cuba is the same as it ever was. Same in North Korea. We have no caused either of those two nations to change their policies. Nor will any amount of sanctions result in Iran changing their policies. "Sanctions" are what politicians do when they want to appear to be doing something without really doing anything. They are a passive-aggressive measure showing that those involved have a problem with taking direct responsibility for effecting change through direct action. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2010-04-05 15:36 |
| #2 Sanctions didn't work in Iraq under Saddam Hussein either. I didn't think they would do much in Iran. Well what's next? |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-04-05 13:50 |
| #1 ION IRAN WMF > IRAN: ONLY CHINA CAN SAVE IRAN FROM [US-led]UN SANCTIONS! and * TOPIX > IS TURKEY TRYING TO SINK OR SAVE IRAN? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-04-05 01:33 |