Voice of America – Inter American Forum
IRmep: Iranian President Ahmadinejad can travel to Venezuela, he can travel to Bolivia to talk about developing their natural gas. He can travel to Nicaragua to gift new housing, tractors, etcetera. However, Iran, in this moment, is under economic sanctions, led by the US Treasury Department, whose members are traveling through every part of the world, trying to intervene in any major foreign investment in Iran. Treasury says to banks, for example, “if you are facilitating these types of projects (like South America), you’re going to lose access to the US financial system”, as well as possibly confidential and reliable access to global financial facilities and consortiums in Europe (such as SWIFT). Meanwhile, there is another intense behind-the-scenes action outside of the United Nations, building at the state level in California, Texas and fifteen other US states declaring that no state pension funds can be invested in companies that have anything to do with Iran. In California, that equals $350 billion dollars. So the “rhetorical” war surge is layered on top of an existing and very real financial war. While Ahmadinejad can travel through South America after his UN activities garnering political support, his promises are going to crash against the reality that Iran has diminished access to the financial and corporate levers they need in order to honor promises and announced aid packages in Latin America.