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Iran Tag

President Donald Trump's administration has officially restored sanctions on Iran that went away with the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. At the same time, SWIFT, a financial messaging service based in Belgium, announced it will suspend "some unspecified Iranian banks’ access to its messaging system in the interest of the stability and integrity of the global financial system," but did not mention the US sanctions.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that America will terminate the 1955 treaty of amity with Iran after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) used the treaty to force the US to ease some sanctions against Iran. This treaty "regulates and promotes economic and diplomatic ties between the two countries." You can read the full text of it here.

India, the second biggest oil customer for Iran, has begun cutting Iranian crude oil imports ahead of the November deadline set by the Trump administration, Indian newspapers report. The United States is expected to impose a fresh round of crippling sanction on Tehran in early November, targeting the country's oil industry -- Islamic Republic's main source of revenue.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry recently admitted that he has had meetings with officials from Iran since leaving office. One of the points Kerry relayed to them was that they should wait out the Trump presidency. It's nearly impossible to imagine the firestorm this would set off among Democrats and the media if a former Bush official had done this to Obama.

With US sanctions biting deep into Iran's economy, country's theocratic leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has admitted that European countries cannot to save the 2015 nuclear deal, Reuters news agency reported.

"There is no problem with negotiations and keeping contact with the Europeans, but you should give up hope on them over economic issues or the nuclear deal," Khamenei told President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet on Wednesday.

On August 25, 1988, a tragedy struck in Iran, one that most people do not know about. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa that led to the execution of 30,000 Iranian political prisoners. That fatwa led to "the biggest massacre of political prisoners since World War II." Khomeini targeted members and those loyal to the opposition group People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK).

With the Turkish currency in free fall, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced a boycott of US-made electronic goods. Showing defiance in the wake of the recent US sanctions imposed in a dispute over the detention of an American pastor, Erdogan accused US President Donald Trump of waging "economic warfare" against the country.

The Iranian protests have not died down, but one would think otherwise since the protests have received little Western attention. I mentioned in a blog post last month that those who support the Iranian nuclear deal and the regime want people to think the Iranian citizens hate America. I've seen a few places try to pin the blame on the renewed American sanctions. Videos that have emerged show citizens angry and outraged at the brutal and oppressive regime, not America.

Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, has revised its regulations to stop Iran from withdrawing €320 million ($400 million) in cash from the country's bank accounts. Under the new conditions, the Bundesbank can stop cash transfers that violate US Treasury sanctions, the German newspaper BILD disclosed. The drastic measure to physically ship the cash out of Germany demonstrates Tehran's demising trust in the European financial institutions as the US Treasury tightens screws on the regime's worldwide financial operations. The transaction is "one of the largest cash transfers ever in German history," a spokesman for the country's finance minister admitted.

Holy cow. The Associated Press has reported that former President Barack Obama's administration attempted to give Iran access to U.S. banks despite sanctions in place and lied to Congress about said plans. In 2016, a license issued by the Treasury Department gave Iran permission "to convert $5.7 billion it held at a bank in Oman from Omani rials into euros by exchanging them first into U.S. dollars."

Iran has been trying to acquire foreign technology to build nuclear weapons, German intelligence reveals. Tehran has been targeting Germany's technology sector to get hold of tech in order to upgrade its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, a report published by the intelligence agency of the German state of Baden-Württemberg indicates. The southwestern German state is home to several leading global technology and engineering companies.