This makes sense, since that is what they did with the billions that Obama gave them.
“Pompeo: US sanctions will prevent Iran from funding Hezbollah, Houthis,” Al Arabiya, November 5, 2018:
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that the reimposition of sanctions against Iran will prevent Tehran from funding Hezbollah and the Houthi militias.
Buraq says
The fatal blow is persuading SWIFT to withdraw from most of the Iranian banking system. That means even misguided European countries that want to undermine Trump’s ace card – sanctions – will not be able to. The means to do so have been taken away – no SWIFT system!
mortimer says
IRAN’S AYATOLLAH BILLIONAIRES ARE ASTRONOMICALLY RICH
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/10442884/Ayatollah-Ali-Khamenei-controls-60-billion-financial-empire-report-says.html
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls £60 billion financial empire, report says
Iran’s supreme leader and pivotal political figure has used a vast financial empire to secure his power, according to an investigation
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, controls a financial empire worth an estimated US$95 billion (£60 billion) – far greater than the wealth accumulated by the late shah, the deposed pro-Western monarch.
Assets often based on property seizures have been acquired by an organisation called Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam [shortened to Setad in Farsi] under Ayatollah Khamenei’s authority and helping to tighten his grip on his power, according to Reuters.
A six-month investigation by the news agency showed that Setad – originally founded by the late Ayatollah Ruollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution – had expanded into a “business juggernaut” in the past six years, to hold stakes in every sector of the Iranian economy. This included finance, oil, telecommunications, production of contraception pills and even ostrich farming.
Its dramatic growth has attracted the attention of the US treasury department, which imposed sanctions on the organisation last year after branding it “a massive network of front companies hiding assets on behalf of… Iran’s leadership”.
The value of Setad’s assets were 40 per cent higher than Iran’s total oil revenues for the past year and significantly exceed the presumed riches of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was ousted in the 1979 revolution that brought the current Islamic regime to power.
Legal action taken by the Islamic authorities claiming that the shah and his wife had stolen $35 billion – roughly $79 billion in today’s values – after fleeing the country at the time of the revolution was dismissed by a US court.
While there is little evidence that Ayatollah Khamenei – renowned for a spartan lifestyle – had used the assets to enrich himself, Reuters reported that they had enabled him to consolidate his power and position himself above the regime’s rival factions.
“The revenue stream generated by Setad helps explain why Khamenei has not only held on for 24 years but also in some ways has more control than his revered predecessor,” Reuters wrote. “Setad gives him the financial means to operate independently of parliament and the national budget, insulating him from Iran’s messy factional infighting.”
Its assets include properties confiscated from business people and Iranians living abroad, the investigation concluded.
The report highlighted cases of houses and possessions being seized from members of the Bahai community – a religious sect not recognised by the regime and whose members are subject to systematic persecution, human rights campaigners say.
One 82-year-old Bahai woman – now living in Europe – described how her apartment and those of her three children in a multi-storey building her family had owned for years were taken away by Setad after a long campaign of harrassment.
While Setad has built schools, roads and provided electricity in impoverished areas, Reuters reported, much of the wealth it has acquired has been retained rather than redistributed.
Some of it has been used to fund Ayatollah Khamenei’s office, known as Beit-e Rahbar (the leader’s house), which now employs around 500 people, many recruited from the military and security services.
Hamid Vaezi, Setad’s head of public relations, told Reuters in an email that its information was “far from realities and is not correct”. He also said Setad disputd the allegations of the US treasury department and was “in the process of retaining U.S. counsel to address this matter.”
Walter Sieruk says
On Tuesday, 9/25/ 18 in a speech President Trump spoke about that awful “deal” that was made with Iran and how terrible is was and that the sanctions lifted were lifted because of it didn’t help the Iranian people, at all and that money Iran received only lined the deep pockets of the mullahs in power in Iran and also further enabled that regime to “advance its bloody agenda “ in the fund and support of its proxy terror groups, such a Hezbollah and Hamas. The President therefore explain that the new sanctions imposes on this regime are necessary.
Just the week before this speech by the President on 9/17 /18 ,the US Special Envoy for Iran of the State Department, Brain Hook, spoke at a press conference and he warned about that insidious “missile program” of Iran and he further spoke about that harsh and oppressive current regime of Iran and likewise declared that “The longest suffering victims of the Iranian regime are the Iranian people.”
This is sadly and tragically the terrible reality of this Islamic tyrannical regime of Iran. This Islamic tyranny has been well nicknamed “the mullahs regime” in which them mullahs and ayatollahs as well as other fiendish and fanatical Muslims in power have a strong and awful control of the Islamic regime of Iran and through their band of Islamic state “police” , who are called the “Revolutionary Guards “come down hard human rights of the Iranian people . Therefore, the Iranian people who are trapped and forced to exist in this Islamic tyranny live in terrible fear of the mullahs and others in power in Iran. This is a tragic and sad reminder of the wisdom that was printed in the periodical of Benjamin Franklin which is entitled POOR RICHARDS’ ALMANACK that reads “Those who are feared are also hated.”
gravenimage says
Pompeo: Restored US sanctions will prevent Iran from funding Hizballah, Houthis
…………………
It will at least put a kink in it–not a bad thing.
terry says
Best of Hitchens on Islam
https://youtu.be/v0Q6DtfUynQ
Watch the entire debate at: https://youtu.be/_CGFMwtJTyE
terry says
Best of Hitchens on Islam
https://youtu.be/v0Q6DtfUynQ
Watch the entire debate at: https://youtu.be/_CGFMwtJTyE
Ibrahim itace muhammed says
It is just an expression of frustration by agent of evils, pampeo ,because Iran has circumvented that idiocy of sanctifications by evil United States.Hezbullah does not need funding from Iran now,it has created funds by itself to defend Lebanon from any incursion by fascist evil Zionist State of Israel.
gravenimage says
Ibrahim itace muhammed wrote:
It is just an expression of frustration by agent of evils, pampeo ,because Iran has circumvented that idiocy of sanctifications by evil United States.
………………………….
I rather like “sanctifications”–that has a nice ring to it…
Notice that Ibrahim itace muhammed does not actually say how Iran is getting around these sanctions.
And Iran’s economy was in a lot of trouble even before these sanctions:
“Trump’s new sanctions threaten to plunge Iran into further economic trouble”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-us-sanctions-impact-trump-oil-economy-tehran-rial-currency-value-latest-a8614571.html
Basing your economy on “Shari’ah finance”–even with unearned oil revenue–is never a good idea.
More:
Hezbullah does not need funding from Iran now,it has created funds by itself to defend Lebanon from any incursion by fascist evil Zionist State of Israel.
………………………….
Wait–I thought that Iran was going to have no problem with these sanctions–so why would Hezbullah need a work-around?
Hezbullah gets about $60 – $100 million a year from Iran–along with weapons and training.
And note how Ibrahim itace muhammed characterizes the plotted destruction of Israel–as “defense”. This is how Muslims think–and I do use the term loosely…