Sanctions, geopolitics and the economy - EVER since Jimmy Carter invoked the International Emergency War Powers Act to freeze revolutionary Iran’s assets with global banks on Wall Street and the City of London, Washington has used economics as a strategic weapon against the Ayatullah’s regime.
Yet George W Bush’s doomed imperial adventure in Iraq was a geopolitical windfall for Teheran at a time when $60 crude oil has boosted its central bank reserves to $50 billion, the highest since the Shah lost his Peacock Throne in 1979. Iranian petrodollars, in turn, financed the arms, cash war chest and logistics of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Alawite Baathist regime in Syria and the Iraqi Shia militias and death squads. In the zero–sum game of Middle East politics, Iran has challenged Washington’s role as the regional superpower and gendarme of the Gulf. By MATEIN KHALID - 7 January 2007.
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