THE ROVING
EYE US
wants SWIFT war on Iran By Pepe
Escobar
What was the parade of European
poodles thinking - that Tehran would just roll
over and absorb the European Union's oil embargo,
scheduled to start on July 1?
No wonder
Brussels was caught as a Gucci deer in the
headlights when the news started to flow that
Tehran would pre-empt the move and immediately
slap its own embargo of crude oil exports to six
European Union countries - deeply in crisis Club
Med members Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain plus
recession-hit France and the Netherlands.
It took virtually no time for Iran's Oil
Ministry and then the Foreign Ministry to deny it;
such a decision, technically, would have to be
officially announced by the Supreme National
Security Council, which also deals with the
nuclear negotiations.
But only the deaf,
dumb and blind wouldn't understand the message;
blowback for the ridiculously counter-productive
European sanctions/oil embargo package will only
plunge vast swathes of Europe further into deep
economic pain.
Iran supplies 500,000
barrels of oil a day to the EU. The mere threat of
an Iranian embargo has already provoked an oil
price spike.
Assuming Club Med countries
would be able to get oil from other sources - and
that's not a given; Saudi Arabia wants high oil
prices with a vengeance - they would have to
reconfigure their refineries to process it.
Inevitably there would be shortages of gasoline;
the average Italian, for instance, is already
furious with the skyrocketing price of gas at the
pump.
Perhaps those tens of thousands of
useless Brussels bureaucrats carrying their
multicolored files up and down should do something
meaningful and send a letter to Washington
officially congratulating the Americans for
further impoverishing tens of millions of EU
citizens.
When in doubt, slap more
sanctions Yet the vultures, jackals and
hyenas of regime change/war can never be appeased
in their sanction lust. The US is now forcing the
EU to cut off Iran from Brussels-based SWIFT - the
independent telecom mechanism/clearinghouse used
by every bank in the world to exchange financial
data (its official name is Society for Worldwide
Interbank Financial Telecommunications). Iran's
Central Bank itself may become a victim.
In a nutshell, SWIFT is the wheel that
moves global financial transactions and trade. So
if this is not an extended, remixed declaration of
hardcore economic war against one country -
nothing else is.
Will it work? Hardly. It
will certainly represent more devastation
unleashed over "the Iranian people" - the vague
entity of choice against which the US has "no
quarrel". More than 40 Iranian banks use SWIFT to
process financial transactions, and Iranians use
it like everybody else in a globalized economy.
It will drag SWIFT's carefully maintained
reputation for trust and neutrality through the
mud; imagine other member countries' reaction to
the fact they can also be totally marginalized
according to the US's whims.
Not to
mention that Washington cannot tell SWIFT what to
do; thus it is not so subtly applying "pressure",
Mafia-style, on the Europeans. The "message" was
delivered in person by David Cohen, the US
Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism
and financial intelligence.
And all this
for what? According to the relentless, suffocating
barrage of spin in Western corporate media, to
"perhaps" buy some time so the Obama
administration can "persuade" the warmongering,
nuclear-armed Likud government in Israel not to
attack Iran this coming spring.
Watch
that American camel Meanwhile, according
to Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, the country
has developed fourth-generation centrifuges made
of carbon fiber that are "speedier, produce less
waste and occupy less space" as they spin at
supersonic speeds to purify uranium.
And
the first made-in-Iran 20% enriched fuel rods have
been installed at the Tehran Research Reactor -
not a bomb factory but a civilian plant designed
to produce medical isotopes for cancer treatment;
this should allow the Research Reactor to operate
independently of any foreign interference.
To top it off, Tehran sent a letter to the
EU "welcoming" the P5+1 - the UN Security Council
veto members plus Germany - if they seriously want
to go back to the table for meaningful
negotiations about the Iranian nuclear dossier.
Let's see what this means.
It's a
very sophisticated Persian miniature - to be
decoded by the Europeans who bother. Tehran is
saying; we sincerely want to talk to you; but we
won't give up on our civilian nuclear program; and
if you keep treating us like dogs, with these
sanctions, embargo and now the SWIFT move, we can
apply a lot of pressure on your already stricken
economies.
Anyone betting on clueless
European politicians and their sherpas
understanding this is hardly guaranteed to hit a
jackpot.
Then there's the stupid argument
that the recent bombings and failed bombings in
Delhi, Georgia and Bangkok represent Tehran's
retaliation for the murder of five civilian
nuclear scientists in Iran - conducted by the
Iranian terrorist group MeK under the orders of
the Israeli Mossad.
If and when Tehran
decides to target Israeli interests, it may be
able to do it closer to home, and it has the
competent operatives to do it without a trace. The
notion that Tehran would send Iranian agents to
friendly Asian countries such as India and
Thailand - and in the case of the Three Stooges in
Bangkok openly displaying their passports and even
rials - is ludicrous beyond belief. These are
patsies; the question is to find out who's
manipulating them.
If the Washington/Tel
Aviv-promoted hysteria is already at fever pitch,
wait for March 20, when the Iranian oil bourse
will start trading oil in other currencies apart
from the US dollar, heralding the arrival of a new
oil marker to be denominated in euro, yen, yuan,
rupee or a basket of currencies.
That
would suit Asian clients - from BRICS members
India and China to US allies Japan and South
Korea, not to mention NATO member Turkey. But that
would also suit European clients, to pay for oil
in their own currency. Tehran - as well as many
key players in the developing world - does want to
sink the petrodollar. That may be the straw to
break the American camel's back.
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