US Treasury blacklists major Iran bank
Treasury Department says that it blacklisted Iran's fifth largest state-owned bank, Bank Sepah, from having any links with US-owned banks, American citizens
WASHINGTON - The US Treasury Department said that it has blacklisted Iran's fifth largest state-owned bank, Bank Sepah, from having any links with US-owned banks and American citizens.
The blacklisting of Bank Sepah effectively cuts the Iranian state-owned bank off from conducting any business linked to the US financial system.
The Treasury said it had barred US business with Bank Sepah, which it said has offices in London, Paris, Rome and Frankfurt, because of its support to "Iranian proliferation firms."
"Bank Sepah is the financial linchpin of Iran's missile procurement network and has actively assisted Iran's pursuit of missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction," Treasury official Stuart Levey said in a statement.
Levey heads up the department's terrorism and financial intelligence office.
'Decline might be offset by other OPEC members'
The Treasury claims that Bank Sepah provides financial support and services to Iran's Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO), as well as other groups which it said oversee Iran's missile program.
"Through its role as a financial conduit, Bank Sepah has facilitated Iran's international purchases of sensitive material for its missile program," the Treasury said in a statement.
The US government had similarly blacklisted Iran's Bank Saderat in September, citing that bank's alleged "support for terrorism."
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported that while Iran's oil industry has raked in record amounts of cash during three years of high oil prices, analysts say a new US campaign to dry up financing for oil and natural gas development ‘poses a threat to the republic's ability to continue exporting oil over the next two decades.’
According to the LA Times, “the campaign comes at a moment of unique vulnerability for Iran's oil industry, which also faces challenges from rising domestic energy consumption, international isolation, a populist spending spree by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and trouble closing contracts with foreign oil companies — a recipe for potential disaster in a nation with one of the world's largest reservoirs of oil.”
"If the government does not control the consumption of oil products in Iran … and at the same time, if the projects for increasing the capacity of the oil and protection of the oil wells will not happen, within 10 years, there will not be any oil for export," Mohammed Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, Iran's deputy oil minister for international affairs, was quoted by the LA Times as saying.
The report quoted analysts as saying that if Iran were to suddenly stop exporting its 2.6 million barrels of oil a day, such as in the event of a military strike, world oil prices probably would skyrocket.
But a gradual decline might be offset by other OPEC members, analysts say, particularly as Iraq increases its oil production and Saudi Arabia carries out plans for significant increases in its production capacity, they told the LA Times.
According to the LA Times, “The efforts by the United States and its allies over the last few months to persuade international banks and oil companies to pull out of Iran threaten dozens of projects, including development of Iran's two massive new oil fields that could expand output by 800,000 barrels a day over the next four years.”
"Many European banks which had accepted financing some oil industries projects have recently canceled them," Nejad-Hosseinian was quoted by the American newpaper as saying.
