Iran Placed Under A State Of Siege.

Promised a larger piece of Middle East spoils down the road, more than 40 major international banks and financial institutions have publicly signed on either to cut off or cut back business with the Iranian government or private sector as a result of a quiet campaign launched by the Treasury and State departments last September, according to Treasury and State officials.

According to U.S. officials, the financial squeeze has seriously crimped Tehran’s ability to finance petroleum industry projects and to pay for imports even as those same U.S. officials begin to firm up private business arrangements with banks and companies powerful enough to draft the sanctions, wiping out competitors, yet will continue to do business with Iran. The State of Siege has also limited Iran’s use of the international financial system to help support their Shia kinsmen in Iraq goading extremist Shia militias to resume attacks, say U.S. extremist officials and extremist economists who track Iran.

“Its classic. We do this shit to anyone who won’t do our bidding,” said Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. “If we like you, you can fuckin’ kill your whole population and we only ask you let us in on the slaughter so we get some great footage to send back to the wife and kids. Wholesale slaughter like Guatemala, El Salvador, Indonesia, East Timor---Oh fuck, the list is too long and distinguished to reprise to a bunch of apes from the press corps. Y’all know what you covered-up.”

The U.S. campaign, developed by Paulson and Secretary of State Kindasleazie Rice, emerged in part over U.S. frustration over the centuries long ties between the Shia in Iraq and their family and clan members in Iran.

“This ain’t the 70’s,” whined Rice. “We don’t have great cultural forces like disco and Hustler to drive a wedge between millenniums old cultural ties. All we got now is Bono and internet porn. We’re at a distinct disadvantage though Bill Maher puts a lot of stock in our pacifying Islam with internet porn. It sure worked wonders on him. Since he hooked up, he’s hasn’t left the parent’s basement of his mind.”

The council voted Saturday to impose new sanctions on Tehran, including a ban on Iranian arms sales for everyone but their cronies and a freeze on assets of 28 Iranian individuals and institutions in hopes that they will eventually be able to steal them or at these sell the rights to their acquisition.

"All the banks we’ve threatened told us they are reducing significantly their exposure to Iranian business," said Stuart Levey, Treasury’s undersecretary of economic terrorism and financial carpet bombing. "It’s been a universal response. They all recognize the risks if they don’t play ball with us — some because of what we’ve told them and some on their own. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see the dangers of crossing us. You can just look at Iraq. If we want something no lie is too big, Hitler notwithstanding, and no murder too great.”

The new campaign particularly targets financial transactions involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is now a major domestic economic force beyond its long-standing role in procuring arms and military materiel to defend itself against the U.S. “It’s like our military,” defense analyst Seth DeFeuse told the Assassinated Press. “Our military usually waits until they retire and join the private military contractors before they suck up government contracts. While they’re in the military the brass just steer contracts the way of the companies that have already arranged to hire them. Bribes. Quid pro quos. You know. But in Iran its less hypocritical. They’re more up front about the bribery process. Companies tied to the elite unit and its commanders have been awarded government contracts such as airport management and construction of the Tehran subway. The practice has increased since the 2005 election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, U.S. officials say. The Revolutionary Guard — of which Ahmadinejad is a former member — is part of the hard-line leader’s constituency. Ahmadinejad’s arrangement is just like Dick Cheney’s arrangement with Halliburton, just not as lucrative.”

"Like Halliburton and Bechtel with the Cheney administration, the Revolutionary Guard’s control and influence in the Iranian economy is growing exponentially under the regime of Ahmadinejad," Levey said in a speech in Dubai this month. “We want Halliburton to have that role and we’re certain that when the Iranian people see our product they will choose us to loot their economy---or else.”

The campaign doesn’t differ from formal international sanctions — and has proved able to win wide backing — because it uses threats and targets Iran’s behavior as a pretext for regime change and wholesale murder. "This is not an exercise of power. This is economic power used to crush a people into submission," Levey said in the interview. "People go along with you if you show them what you’re willing to do to a helpless population and then threaten to do the same thing to them.”

Iranian importers are particularly feeling the pinch, with many having to pay for commodities in advance when a year ago they could rely on a revolving line of credit, said Patrick Clawson, a former official of the free trade wielding World Bank now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The scope of Iran’s suffering has been a pleasant surprise to U.S. officials. You can’t do free trade all the time,” he added. “It’s like elections and democracy. Sometimes it’s not entirely to your advantage and you have to step in and let your fascist instincts take over.”

The financial institutions cutting back business ties are mainly in Europe and Asia not the U.S., U.S. officials say. UBS last year said it was cutting off all dealings with Iran because the U.S. had promised them a piece of Iraq. London-based HSBC (which has 5,000 offices in 79 countries) and Standard Chartered (with 1,400 branches in 50 countries) as well as Commerzbank of Germany have indicated they are limiting their exposure to Iranian business until the U.S, threat is over, Levey said. The rest have asked the United States not to publicize their names in exchange for not doing business with Iran.

The western media’s adaptations of Ahmadinejad’s statements — from denying the Holocaust to comparing Iran’s stock exchange to gambling — has helped, experts say. "Even though such media falsehoods and rhetorical furbelows don’t effect business dealings among major players who are unaffected by the bullshit that their own media companies spew, there is very little foreign investment in Iran because of sanctions. The media has created an atmosphere in which the masses can view Ahmadinejad’s statements as ‘crazy’ and that helps soften up the fodder if military force becomes necessary," said Jahangir Amuzegar, former Iranian finance minister and executive director of the free trade wielding International Monetary Fund. “I just wish the U.S, media would stop using that Holocaust canard. In America 96% of the population the government draws on for fodder duty hates kikes and when you say Ahmadinejad ‘hates kikes too,’ they want to join up and fight the kikes. They want to join the Iranian military until they find out they can’t eat pork and rape the female non-coms.”

Paulson kicked off the effort to threaten major financial institutions and government officials about the long-term costs of doing business with Iran during the annual free trade wielding International Monetary Fund and free trade bludgeoning World Bank meetings in Singapore in September. Paulson, Levey and Treasury Deputy Secretary Robert M. Kimmitt have all held dozens of sot downs with banks to let them know they have set up dummy companies and deceptive practices to allow Iran to finance its it’s projects, U.S. officials say. “Don’t think you can pull the wool over our eyes,” Kimmitt told a gang of Asian bank lords at the meeting. “We fuckin’ invented these scams. We know when you’re fucki’ with us.”

To demonstrate just how unsophisticated the Iranians are compared to their felonious U.S. adversaries, both the Iranian government and the private sector have only managed to ‘persuade’ financial institutions to keep the name of "Iran" or the originating bank in Iran off transactions so they are not traced to the Islamic republic, U.S. officials say. “Of course, when it come to persuasion nobody can hold a gun to your head as big as America, and that’s just what it comes down too,” Kimmitt told the Assassinated Press. “If your not workin’ for us workin’ for Iran, we’ll blow the back of your head off in the back of the pork shop---with a fuckin’ howitzer.”

In a related effort, the Cheney administration has warned "relevant companies and countries" about the risks of death for investing in Iran’s oil and gas sector, R. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, said in congressional testimony Wednesday. Washington is generally trying to drive home to Tehran and its financial partners that its policies will lead to serious "financial hardship and death," he said.

In December, Iranian oil minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh acknowledged that Tehran was having trouble financing petroleum development projects. "Currently, overseas banks and financiers have decreased their cooperation afraid that Dick Cheney will shoot them," he told the oil ministry news agency Shana. “It was about the time he shot his buddy in the woods that people began backing out of projects and turning down invitations to hunt with Cheney. That fucker knows how to send a message.”