{"id":38730,"date":"2018-10-04T19:31:45","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T00:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38730"},"modified":"2018-10-04T19:31:45","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T00:31:45","slug":"sanctions-busting-european-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38730","title":{"rendered":"Sanctions Busting, European Style"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bullionstar.com\/blogs\/bullionstar\/sanctions-busting-european-style\/\">Sanctions Busting, European Style<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"content-middle-area-full\">\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>U.S. officials <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-iran-nuclear-usa-pompeo\/pompeo-criticizes-eu-plan-for-special-iran-payment-channel-idUSKCN1M52TZ\">were infuriated<\/a> last week when Germany, the UK, and France <a href=\"https:\/\/eeas.europa.eu\/headquarters\/headquarters-Homepage\/51036\/implementation-joint-comprehensive-plan-action-joint-ministerial-statement_en\">unveiled plans<\/a> to create a European payments channel to help Iran to avoid U.S. sanctions. Even more surprising was their chosen allies: in announcing their sanctions busting plan, the Europeans were joined by Russia and China.<\/p>\n<p>There has been very little detail provided on the proposed payments channel. The press release describes it as &#8220;a Special Purpose Vehicle, to facilitate payments related to Iran&#8217;s exports (including oil) and imports.&#8221; Nor did EU High Representative Federica Mogherini&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/eeas.europa.eu\/headquarters\/headquarters-homepage\/51040\/remarks-hrvp-mogherini-following-ministerial-meeting-e3eu-2-and-iran_en\">comments after<\/a> the press release contain much information about the special purpose vehicle&#8217;s technical specifications, other than to say that it would be &#8220;opened to other partners in the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Despite the lack of particulars, I&#8217;ll make some educated guesses in this post about the intended role of the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) and how it will be designed. I think that the SPV will probably be able to carve out some space for the rest of the world to engage in Iranian trade, but we shouldn&#8217;t overestimate its power. The U.S., after all, wields an incredible amount of economic might and under Trump hasn&#8217;t been shy about deploying it.<\/p>\n<h4>Trump leaves the Nuclear Deal<\/h4>\n<p>The background for the creation of the new European payments channel is the Trump administration&#8217;s recent departure from the Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Action\">Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action<\/a> (JCPOA). This was a deal signed by the France, UK, Germany, U.S., Russia, and China, or the E3+3, in 2015. The JCPOA promised to normalize Iran&#8217;s economic relations with the rest of the world in return for fully-audited limitations on Iran&#8217;s nuclear efforts.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sanctions Busting, European Style U.S. officials were infuriated last week when Germany, the UK, and France unveiled plans to create a European payments channel to help Iran to avoid U.S. sanctions. Even more surprising was their chosen allies: in announcing their sanctions busting plan, the Europeans were joined by Russia and China. There has been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8726,1997,281,441,18405,827],"class_list":["post-38730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bullionstar-com","tag-economic-sanctions","tag-europe","tag-iran","tag-jp-koning","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38731,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38730\/revisions\/38731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}