by Kurt Nimmo
Editor’s note: Given that money is necessary to buy food, medical supplies and other necessities of life, economic war IS war in that it produces human casualties. It isn’t as spectacular as blood splattered from a drone attack, but dead is dead. Our illegitimate government will wage such a war against Iran, and then when Iran shows a dislike for America, will cite this dislike as proof of the validity of the government’s policies. This is like me punching someone without cause and then acting shocked when they don’t want to talk with me.
The economic war waged against the people of Iran by the United States and the European Union is beginning to show results.
“Iran’s rial plunged against the U.S. dollar in open-market trade on Monday, taking its loss in value over the past week to more than a quarter in further evidence that Western sanctions are shattering the economy,” Reuters reports today.
The rial fell more than 17% this morning and has lost more than 80 percent of its value since the beginning of the year.
The establishment media reports that Iran’s economic ills were exacerbated after the government cobbled together an “exchange center” designed to provide dollars to importers of basic goods at a special rate nominally cheaper than the market rate.
Instead of reversing fears about the availability of dollars, the effort “triggered a worse crisis via market psychology,” Cliff Kupchan, a Middle East expert at the Eurasia Group, a political risk research firm, told Reuters. “The government’s initiative… brought to the surface a tremendous lack of confidence in its ability to manage the currency.”
Robert Wenzel, writing for Economic Policy Journal, believes the CIA is undermining Iran’s economy by counterfeiting the rial and flooding the country with the bogus notes to create hyperinflation. “The Fed may think money printing boosts an economy, but the CIA knows what it really does,” Wenzel writes.
Although there is scant evidence the CIA is counterfeiting the rial to undermine Iran, there is sufficient evidence the United States is waging financial war on the country.“As a global-macro analyst, I am frequently asked if war with Iran will come and, if so, when,” writes Jim Rickards, a Wall Street economist and investment banker.
“My answer is that the war has already begun. It’s not a shooting war – yet. What the U.S. and Israel are now waging with Iran is what experts call unrestricted warfare. This is warfare that consists of sabotage, assassination, special operations, psychological operations, attacks on critical infrastructure, cyber warfare and – the most recent addition to the arsenal – financial warfare.”
Earlier this year, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on the central bank of Iran. “International banks were told if they did business with Iran’s central bank, they would be barred from doing business in the global dollar payments system controlled by the U.S. Of course, the banks complied,” Rickards writes. “The result was an immediate isolation of Iran from the dollar system and an acute shortage of dollars in Iran. The Iranian currency, the rial, crashed in value 40% against the dollar in a few days.”