Sanctions

  Thwarting the anti-dollar coalition should be Washington’s top national priority   By Gal Luft August 30, 2018   The United States is currently waging economic warfare against one tenth of the world’s countries with cumulative population of nearly 2 billion people and combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $15 trillion. These include Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea and others on which Washington has imposed sanctions over the years, but also countries like China, Pakistan and Turkey which are not under full sanctions but rather targets of other punitive economic measures. In addition, thousands of individuals from scores of countries are included in the Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals who are effectively blocked from the U.S.-dominated global financial system. Many of those designated are either part of or closely linked to their countries’ leadership. Published by Yahoo...

  Following is the response of Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s 12 demands from Iran. On May 21, Pompeo set 12 conditions for Iran to follow in order for the United States to agree to a new nuclear deal with Tehran.   By Mohammad Javad Zarif  Iran’s Foreign Minister Following the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Climate Accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is the third multilateral agreement that the current United States administration has withdrawn from. The administration has also put in jeopardy other multilateral arrangements such as NAFTA, the global trade system, and parts of the United Nations system, thus inflicting considerable damage to multilateralism, and the prospects for resolving disputes through diplomacy. Originally published here on Iran Daily on June 20, 2018 The announcement on 8 May 2018 of United States’ withdrawal from the JCPOA and...

  By Jan Oberg Commenting on Iran’s global PressTV why the US sanctions against Iran are one big violation of international law and why other countries should resist all pressures from the US and its threat of imposing its secondary sanctions on them – remember Trump’s tweet that anyone who does business with Iran will not do business with the US. This behaviour – including the attempt to suffocate 85 million innocent Iranian citizens – is an unacceptable type of policy as well as a gross violation of human rights. Decency, ethics and simple fairness should compel the world to tell the US that on this one it stands alone. The burden here is very high on the Euopean Union. In passing, let me say that I am happy to work with PressTV. I’m always being treated with respect and gratitude and over the years not one attempt to manipulate...

Photo: US President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at the Moscow Summit 1991 By Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images Over the last four month, ten articles about the new Cold War have been published on the TFF Associates blog. And on our social media you’ll find hundreds of brilliant, informative posts written by others. While this new Cold War is certainly different from the first Cold war that ended in 1989, we are not in doubt that there is a new such tragic war and that the risk of military confrontation between Russia and NATO countries in Europe has increased. We also happen to think it could have been avoided. This Cold War has to do with, among many other things, NATO’s counterproductive expansion since 1994, the way Yugoslavia broke down and was broken up, with Ukraine and now Syria as well as – perhaps surprisingly to some – the...

  Comment by Jan Oberg RT offers the background and, towards the end, Oberg deals with what it means politically. The U.S. has upheld sanctions on Iran since 1979. When is enough enough? With what right does the country suffocate the 85 million Iranian citizens? Perhaps it is time that you boycott these two companies since they have now decided to contribute more to war than to peace, to support the U.S. in its gross violations of international law (by withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal which is under a UN Security Council resolution) and in its human rights violations – not to speak of threatening sanctions on everybody else who continue to do business with Iran. Watch the show… Some “parameters” may prevent you from using the arrow below. If so click “Watch the show…”    

  • Iran’s foreign minister says the US is addicted to imposing sanctions on other countries but the Iranian nation, through its unity and resistance, can force Washington to give up such habit. The comments by Mohammad Javad Zarif come as the US is set to restore sanctions on Iran after pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal in May. Zarif said the world has also come to the understanding that Washington needs to stop using sanctions to pressurize others. He said the US economic pressure has been unable to hamper Iran’s progress in the past and that the new sanctions would prove futile as well. The top diplomat urged the Iranian people to stand united in the face of the United States in order to preserve the country’s dignity. I was asked to comment on Zavad Zarif’s statement and added that it could be seen as the start of...

  • On July 6, 2018 there was a meeting in Vienna concerning the JCPOA, or the Iran nuclear deal, and how to handle it after the U.S. withdrawal from the deal and the U.S. attempts to isolate Iran further and suffocate its 85 million people even more by trying to prevent it from selling its oil and simultaneously have Saudi Arabia increase its production. The participants were China, Russia, Germany, France and the UK and the meeting was chaired by the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini. Here is a PressTV report about it. And here is the EU’s document that was produced at the meeting. According to TFF director, Jan Oberg, the major problems with this is that the EU, Russia and China have known for many months that President Trump would withdraw from the deal and also has an almost personal hate of the country and of...

  Can you smell the whiff of smoke? You surely can. But the gunfire? Not yet. But it must start soon if the battle has any chance of success. President Donald Trump has to be faced down. Not only because of his sabotage of the Iran nuclear deal but also because of his attack on Europe’s export of steel and aluminum which breaks all the rules on tariffs set by the World Trade Organisation. This man should not be allowed to get away with his gross disturbance of the world political and economic order. Donald Tusk, the President of the Council of the European Union, said boldly last week, “Who needs enemies when you have friends like this?” Who indeed? Trump is, as David Goodhart wrote in Foreign Affairs, “a living fossil, the sort of ‘ugly American’ common enough in earlier eras”. Trump is leading America into a dark tunnel...

    By Farhang Jahanpour May 22, 2018 Mike Pompeo’s declaration of war on Iran makes the world less safe Speaking at the Heritage Foundation this morning, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo practically declared war on Iran. His unprecedented threats against Iran went even beyond what President Trump had said in the past. Commenting on the speech (full transcript here), JStreet wrote: “With their decision to violate the historic JCPOA arms control agreement, the president and his ‘war cabinet’ have created a strategic disaster of their own making and undone the major accomplishments of the previous administration. They have made the US, Israel and the world less safe.”   Short history of Iran’s nuclear activities: 1957 to the JCPOA After 12 years of intensive talks, initially between Britain, France and Germany (the EU-3), and finally between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany (P5+1),...

    By Gordon M. Hahn February 14, 2018 The US and the rest of the West continue to carry out the same failed Russia policy that let to the ‘new Cold War. That policy can be summed up in the following words: We, with our NATO and EU expansion, will ignore your interests and national security concerns; you must follow our model immediately or feel our wrath. Beginning in the 1990s a Western expansion model’ — NATO and EU expansion without Russia — drove Moscow to retrench on democracy and establish a soft authoritarian regime and led inevitably to the Ukrainian conflict and ‘new cold war.’ Originally published at Gordon Hahn’s website here The new cold war – for now limited in its hot sphere to proxy wars in Ukraine and Syria – has led to a doubling down on this failed Western approach by continuously intensifying sanctions and...

  By Jan Oberg Comment on PressTV, February 17, 2018  

By Mike Whitney January 16, 2018   The Trump administration has settled on a plan for sabotaging the Iranian Nuclear deal that does not explicitly violate the terms of the agreement. Trump will continue to suspend sanctions, as is required under the terms of the deal, but at the same time, he will warn that if the agreement isn’t changed to meet his specific demands,  he will terminate it unilaterally. “If at any time I judge that such an agreement is not within reach, I will withdraw from the deal immediately,” Trump said. We can expect Trump to continue to issue these same threats in the months ahead as it helps to maximize the uncertainty as to whether the agreement will survive or not. As a businessman and investor,  Trump  knows that uncertainly is nearly as effective as sanctions when it comes to dampening foreign investment in the country’s businesses...