"A Financial hit on Iran?" (Time.com)

[oblivious]

May 1 edition
Posted Monday, Apr. 24, 2006

Ahead of this week's U.N. Security Council deadline for Iran to abandon its nuclear activities and an expected report from nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei, U.S. officials have been mapping a plan to hit the defiant regime. But the attacks will be financial, not military. The U.S. and its European allies will ask the council next month for a resolution that would pave the way for political and economic sanctions. If, as expected, Russia and China threaten a veto or stall, the U.S. intends to work outside the U.N. to isolate Tehran "diplomatically and economically," Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said last week. "Countries that trade with Iran ... ought to begin to rethink those commercial trade relationships."

Among the plan's first targets: Iran's accounts and financial institutions in Europe. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met last week with the finance ministers of Britain and Germany, where, according to a U.S. Treasury study, Iranian-government banks operate branches to handle funds generated by the oil trade. The U.S. wants non-Iranian banks to stop facilitating Tehran's money flow. A senior official involved in devising the strategy told TIME, "It's about convincing financial institutions not to deal with bad guys, because they're worried about their own reputations."

Iran has shifted some accounts from Europe to Persian Gulf countries in anticipation of a squeeze.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1186554,00.html

[Skink]

1. In retaliation Iran disrupts oil supply driving up prices at the pump..

A win win for Bushco.

[oblivious]

3. This sounds so desperate. I don't see how it could possibly work.

Why should European banks stop handling funds from a country which is breaking no international law? And when that country holds the second largest reserves of oil AND gas on earth.

However, I see Iran is shifting accounts to Persian Gulf countries. So Europe and America become even more irrelevant in the new world order.

[enid602]

2. Iran

Sounds like we're blackmailing our European allies to get them in line with re: to Iran. Dolar diplomacy can only go so far.

[patdem]

4. This economic war will include Russia, China and South America

all Mid Eastern countries, except Isreal, and the Carribian and all other countries who do not bend to the USA's unilateral position of 'premption'...could this lead to WWIII?

[ixion]

5. I don't know the exact reason why, but it seems to me that someone

is trying very, very hard to start WWIII.

And I mean going out of their way, to do this.

It'll be pretty stupid, once it starts, and then too late to stop it. :-(

:nuke: