SPEAKING
FREELY The
great US heist on Iranian
assets By Ardeshir Ommani
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
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Just as in the 2003
disaster when President George W Bush under cover
of a blatant falsification - Iraq's possession of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - ordered a
massive pre-emptive bombardment of Iraq and began
a 10-year war and mayhem, on May 15, 2006 a report
by the Intelligence Division of the New York
Police Department stated that "as the possibility
of military action taken against Iran grows
stronger, so does the danger of the City [New
York] being attacked by agents of the Iranian
government or its sympathizers."
This
putative hyperbole, just like the self-serving one
about Iraq
and its non-existent
WMD's, provided the cause for identifying the
"potential sources of danger ... so that law
enforcement (agencies) can maximize opportunities
to neutralize these threats".
NYPD
blues The report which later on was made
available to the Associated Press, pursued several
critical objectives: first and foremost was to
frighten and silence 1.5 million Iranians living
in the United States from expressing their
opposition to the American-designed war on the
country of their origin. Secondly, the direct
charges brought by the office of the FBI against
the personnel of the Iranian Mission at the United
Nations were aimed at creating an atmosphere of
fright and intimidation for Iranians who might
request assistance from the representatives of the
Islamic Republic in the process of defending civil
rights curtailed by the US intelligence agencies.
To lay the ground for cultivating
unfounded guilt, confusion and repression by way
of implication, the report asserted: "The most
significant threat to New York City in the event
of US military action against Iran will likely
originate with the Iranian government, through the
Iranian intelligence services (IIS), which
allegedly operates locally through the Alavi
Foundation and the Iranian Mission to the United
Nations."
The plans for silencing,
discrediting and dishonoring the Iranians residing
in the US - and in Iran's Interest Section in
Washington and its Permanent Mission to the United
Nations - are incomplete so long as the sense of
community and camaraderie among them remains
intact. Whereas the great majority of Iranians are
Shia Muslims and mosques are their houses of
worship and the center of their socio-cultural
gathering, the intelligence report opens a salvo
against the single source, the Alavi Foundation,
that provides financial support for the
maintenance of the Muslim cultural institutes.
According to the May 2006 report of the
New York Police Department's intelligence analysis
unit, the Alavi Foundation's purpose is "to
promote understanding and harmony among people of
different religions," by providing assistance to
public organizations "during times of hardship and
deprivation caused by war or natural disasters."
In the blink of an eye, the intelligence
report turns the table and levels the sword of
justice at the life-line for several mosques,
schools, community assemblies and libraries.
Without the tuition and educational grants of the
foundation, thousands of college students would be
deprived of the chance of attaining higher
education and university cultural enrichment
programs would be curtailed. The course of action
pursued by the New York City Justice Department
aims at eliminating the influence and popularity
of the foundation among the Muslims residing in
the US and, if possible, expropriating the huge
real estate asset of a non-profit organization
which was originally built, paid for and
maintained by an Iranian national sovereign fund
during the reign of the Shah.
The report,
citing the views of the New York Police
Department, reiterates that the "FBI officials
have suspected that the Alavi Foundation is using
its Islamic centers as a means of penetrating the
Black Muslim Community to recruit sympathizers."
It goes as far as saying that "According to open
source reports, black Muslims involved in the 1993
World Trade Center (WTC) bombing were recruited
from mosques in Jersey City, NJ and Brooklyn." As
we see the discoveries of the intelligence report
need no supporting proof. The allegation is as
valid as the pretenses by the US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton that Iran is busy building
nuclear weapons, though she can't provide a shadow
of evidence that they exist.
The sharpest
example of such a false allegation by a kangaroo
court surfaced in an article authored by Benjamin
Weiser and Scott Shane of the New York Times on
May 19, 2011 to the effect that "Iranian officials
had 'foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks', according
to a court filing … in a federal lawsuit in
Manhattan that seeks damages for Iran's 'direct
support for, and sponsorship of, the most deadly
act of terrorism in American history'." If the
readers of the article stop short of reading the
article to its end, they miss the most vital piece
of information that says the 9/11 "commission
report said that it had 'found no evidence that
Iran or Hezbollah (of Lebanon) was aware of the
planning for what later became the 9/11 attack.'"
Secondly, the claimants' identities and
testimony were not revealed in the filing,"
according to lawyers who brought the original suit
against the officials of the Islamic Republic of
Iran on behalf of a group of families who
energetically sought monetary compensation for the
alleged damages their family members or themselves
had received.
Having their eyes fixated on
the real estate and financial assets of the Alavi
Foundation, on the Iranian government's and the
personal and business bank accounts of senior
Iranian officials working in Europe and the US,
the intelligence strategists of the New York
Police Department, the court prosecutors, the
lawyers who originally brought the suit, the
Iranian informants whose primary intention of
revealing the so-called secrets was to gain an
asylum status to the US and the claimants who
looked for easy money, all and all, left no
allegation untouched.
The group claimed
that the Islamic Republic of Iran with close
collaboration with al-Qaeda helped the terrorist
group to enter and safely exit the US. In this
regard, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Even elementary students of international politics
know that al-Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist group with
Saudi flavor and its distinct interpretation of
Islam, despises the Shi'ite believers of the same
religion. Being a Sunni group and allied with
al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden, the Taliban on
the same day that its forces captured the northern
city of Mazar-e-sharif, August 8, 1998, kidnapped
and murdered eight Iranian diplomats and a state
news agency (IRNA) correspondent from Iran's
consulate in Afghanistan.
The US court
system has heaped tons of charges against Iran to
justify its three-decades long commercial and
financial sanctions, imposition of a stiff embargo
on Iranian oil shipments, the presence of its
aircraft carriers and warships in the Persian
Gulf, baiting Iran to create another "Tonkin Gulf"
incident, arming and assisting the terrorist
groups of Jundollah on Iran's south-eastern region
of Balochistan and the Kurdish terrorist group of
PJAK (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan) on the
north-western region of Iran, violating the air
space of Iran using drones, the cyber attacks (the
Stuxnet worm and other computer viruses directed
at the oil and gas industry of Iran), and lastly,
but not the least important, seizing and freezing
Iran's financial assets and bank accounts.
After ruining the banking system and the
national economies of the US and major countries
of Europe through burdening them with huge,
unsustainable military budgets, launching several
wars within the same decade, fostering a wide
income and wealth disparity between a class of
rich financiers and the majority of the masses of
working classes, the US in particular, in the last
quarter of century has been in the illegitimate
business of taking over, seizing, freezing and
expropriating Iranian banks, financial assets and
bank accounts opened in American and European
banks.
Freezing and seizing Iran's
financial assets In order to know the depth
and breadth of US oppression and atrocities
against the Iranian people by containing the
country's economy and international trade and
technological cooperation, it is suffice to know
that the following banks of Iran, a short segment
of a longer list, have been banned by the US
Treasury from carrying on economic activities as
of January 23, 2012: Ansar Bank, Arian Bank, Banco
Internacional De Desarrolloo, C.A., Urb. El Rosal,
Bank of Industry and Mine (of Iran), Bank
Kargoshaee, Bank Mellat, Bank Melli Iran (Central
Bank) ... Those banks constitutes less than 30% of
the banks on the list of Specially Designated
Nationals and Blocked Persons (known as the SDN
List), administered by the US Office of Foreign
Assets Control (OFAC). We must indicate that the
following data is part of a longer list of
censored banks, companies and individuals.
According to this partial data, the United States
Treasury has frozen the banking activities of 23
individuals and 16 Iranian engineering, oil and
gas marine services, insurance companies and
consultancy agencies.
There is no doubt
that the main objections of the OFAC to the
financial and commercial activities of these
groups of entrepreneurs is that they help Iran's
economy by helping that of the US and themselves,
even if their business enterprises are not
involved in the transfer of technological know-how
to Iran and are confined to the medical and
nutritional sectors.
It is worth
mentioning that Iran is not the first country that
the US has had its eyes on its real estate and
financial assets. In 2003 after ordering the
bombardment of Baghdad, Washington confiscated
valuable Iraqi properties, and then, acting as
judge and jury years later, arbitrarily evaluated
them to be worth US$1.7 billion.
In common
language, the United States government is a
colossal thief.
More recently in May 2011,
the Obama administration seized more than $30
billion of Libyan assets in American banks, to
date with no clear accounting of where the money
went.
Over the years, through the
involvement of willing US courts, a substantial
number of the top 1% of Americans with Jewish
background have been awarded large amounts of
money as "compensation". For example, in May 2011,
a Washington, DC judge ordered Iran to pay $600
million in punitive damages to the families of US
citizens killed in Israel by Hamas forces in the
Gaza strip. The year before the same judge, Royce
Lamberth, ordered Iran to pay $92 million to the
survivors and relatives of the US soldiers killed
in the 1983 bombing in Lebanon, allegedly by
Hezbollah guerilla forces. The question remains to
be asked why Iran must pay compensation for the
Israeli casualties while the clashes are the
result of the Israeli occupation of the
Palestinian territories?
President Barack
Obama on February 6, 2012 ordered a freeze on all
Iranian government and central bank assets held in
the US or any foreign branch of a US entity. On
July 1, 2010, by signing into law, President Obama
gave the US Treasury a unilateral license to
impose punitive sanctions not only on the Iranian
energy and financial companies but also on
third-party companies and governments that trade
with Iran.
In addition, the current CIA
director Leon Panetta concurrently said that these
new sanctions could "help weaken the regime" and
"create serious economic problems" for Iran. This
is an indictment of the US policy (Democrats and
Republicans) to harm the Iranian people.
On February 12, 2012, the Senate Banking,
Housing and Urban Affairs Committee passed a bill
that would extend US sanctions to Iranian energy
joint ventures, expand sanctions on Iran's
petrochemical sector and identify other
sanction-able activities of the Iranian
government. The bill would, for the first time
extend sanctions to companies entering into new
energy-related joint ventures anywhere in the
world where Iranian government is a partner or
investor. The provision also includes any venture
where Iran would gain access to efficient energy
technology. This bill also targets Iran's
petrochemical industry.
That Senate bill
was so extremely out of touch with the
international norms and standards that it
stimulated the reactionary Senator Robert
Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, to propose an
amendment that would block ships from loading or
unloading cargo in US ports if they have visited
ports in Iran, Syria or North Korea in the
preceding 180 days. Fortunately, there was a
majority of less imprudent senators in the
Banking, Housing and Urban Committee who rejected
the amendment and saved the US from being branded
by the community of nations as a country ruled by
a group of outlaws masquerading as American
people's representatives.
Ardeshir
Ommani, president of the American Iranian
Friendship Committee (AIFC), is a writer and
political analyst with a background in political
economy. AIFC’s website is www.iranaifc.com.
The author may be contacted at:
ardeshiromm@optonline.net
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
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click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
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