Tehran (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The main impact of UN sanctions on Iran is to make life harder for Iranian companies because they cannot do business with US or European banks, import ‘high-end’ items and export Iranian products. Even when they are busted, sanctions cause unpredictable and long delays. All this because of Iran’s nuclear programme.
“We have to go back to old traditions of carrying cash around,” a businesswoman who runs a transport company told Reuters. "Carrying US$ 50,000 in cash to any border these days is one of the biggest risks you can take—both for the company and the employees doing it."
The cost of issuing letters of credit, a crucial instrument in financing trade, has risen sharply over the past year.
Western bankers, including the Swiss, turn to non-Western banks willing to deal with Iran since they are largely absent present on the ground.
An Iranian trader said equipment for a university listed as "laboratory" items—for an arts rather than science department—took 10 weeks to get an export permit to Iran from a European state, compared with the usual two.
A construction executive has opted to look at possibilities in Dubai, a regional financial and commercial hub, where others are also seeking to open offices to skirt problems of doing business from Iran. But US and British banks have become more vigilant and have started cancelling Iranian business accounts in the Emirate.
Pakistanis are the ones who often profit, especially when Americans pay for the job.
As the United States and France get ready to impose further sanctions, some point out that sanctions were used against Iraq: people, not the government, suffered at that time.
Not much of a chance for political changes coming from sanction. It is no accident that Ahmadinejad said that the nuclear question was “closed.”