I'm not an international banker, nor do I play one on t.v., but reporting by John McGlynn at globalresearch.ca leads me to think he's got his eye on the arm-twisting money men over at the U.S. Treasury who, on March 20th, effectively declared that any bank that does business with any bank in Iran will not continue to do business with the international banking system.
McGlynn's headline is "Day of Infamy: The March 20, 2008 US Declaration of War on Iran"
How did this come about?
Under Section 311 of the USA Patriot Act the US Treasury Department, acting through FinCEN (a unit within the US Treasury Department, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) , has been provided with "a range of options that can be adapted to target specific money laundering and terrorist financing concerns." Specifically, Section 311 contains six "special measures" to significantly increase the powers of the Treasury (and other US government agencies) to block alleged terrorist financing activities. As explained by a Treasury official during April 2006 testimony before Congress, the most punitive measure requires:
"U.S. financial institutions to terminate correspondent relationships with the designated entity. Such a defensive measure effectively cuts that entity off from the U.S. financial system. It has a profound effect, not only in insulating the U.S. financial system from abuse, but also in notifying financial institutions and jurisdictions globally of an illicit finance risk."
Using FinCEN, on March 20th the U.S. warned all international banks:
"to take into account the risk arising from the deficiencies in Iran's AML/CFT [anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism] regime, as well as all applicable U.S. and international sanctions programs, with regard to any possible transactions."
Not, according to McClynn, simply Iran's Central Bank, but all banks domiciled in or operating from Iran.
If the E.U., Russia and China follow the U.S. lead, and McGlynn thinks that they will, McGlynn thinks we will see the same kind of results we saw during the 1990's in Iraq: hundreds of thousands of dead kids. Of course, when asked about the half million dead Iraqi children due to those sactions on "60 Minutes", Madeleine Albright said it was worth it.
But, there is more to this story. This is apparently, the first full implementation of that famous "Shock and Awe" doctrine used only militarily in Iraq. In a 1996 publication written for the National Defense University, Harlan Ullman and James Wade, stated:
"Economic sanctions are likely to continue to be a preferable political alternative or a necessary political prelude to an offensive military step . . .In a world in which nonlethal sanctions are a political imperative, we will continue to need the ability to shut down all commerce into and out of any country from shipping, air, rail, and roads. We ought to be able to do this in a much more thorough, decisive, and shocking way than we have in the past . . . Weapons that shock and awe, stun and paralyze, but do not kill in significant numbers may be the only ones that are politically acceptable in the future."
There's a great deal of denial at dkos about any kind of military action against Iran, with reasons ranging from $200 bbl. oil to potential Iranian retaliation. So, my question to all the financial wizards here is, Is this how we're going to do it?