2 October 12 15:47–Israel is readying for economic war. Hebrew daily “Ma’ariv” reports that the Prime Minister’s Bureau, encouraged by the collapse of Iran’s currency, is trying to persuade the EU to tighten sanctions to increase the pressure on the government in Teheran. The sanctions’ next stage is a total embargo on trade and paralysis of the Iranian economy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit several European countries shortly to continue efforts to persuade them to tighten sanctions against Iran. “This is a change of the disk in relations with Iran,” said a top government official.

The final objective is to cause a complete halt in EU-Iranian and US-Iranian trade, which will supposedly force the ayatollahs to forego Iran’s nuclear program for fear of a popular uprising of the kind that has toppled several dictatorships in the Middle East in the past two years.

At the end of the trading week, the Iranian rial lost almost a quarter of its value. The plunge was due to pressure by the Great Powers on Iran, through the sanctions imposed against it. The sanctions have made it much harder to raise capital from foreign trade and have hurt Iran’s foreign currency reserves.

The rial fell 9% against the dollar today to a new low of 37,000 rials to the dollar from 34,200 rials at yesterday’s close, a foreign currency trader told “Reuters” yesterday. Other traders said that the exchange rate fell even more, to 38,000 or 40,000 rials to the dollar.

“The currency has lost about a third of its value since Monday last week, when the government launched an ‘exchange center’ that was designed to stabilise the rial by supplying dollars to importers, but appears to have backfired,” “Reuters” reports .

“Iran’s economy has been hit hard this year by Western economic sanctions against its disputed nuclear programme. The sanctions have slashed its oil exports and mostly excluded it from the global banking system.”

The rial’s free fall indicates that the sanctions are affecting Iran’s ability to earn foreign currency, and that its hard currency reserves are dwindling. According to website “Mesghal”, the rial traded at 24,600 against the dollar last Monday…Read More>>

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