Monday 28 January 2013

Sacntion hurting the small merchanst in Iran

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1320097--iranian-merchants-feeling-effects-of-west-s-sanctions-on-iran

Isfahan, Iran


Iranian merchants feeling effects of West’s sanctions on Iran


Published on Sunday January 27, 2013
   
  

EHSAN KHOSRAVI/AFP/Getty Images Western sanctions against Tehran have "destroyed" the 400-year-old Isfahan bazaar, merchants say.
Tom Scott
Special to the Star
12 Comments
ISFAHAN, IRAN—A young merchant lifts a rack of finely wrought gold bracelets to the light.
“(These are) 18-karat,” says Alireza Arzani, 24, promoting the signature etched handiwork he has acquired from local craftsmen and will market to retailers from across Iran.
We are standing in a closet-sized booth in the Isfahan bazaar, located off the historic main square of one of Iran’s great cities, where iconic blue-tiled mosques dominate the skyline.
Trusting your nose or instinct, you can pursue an endless path through the bazaar’s cavernous halls, following rivers of spice down arched corridors or brushing past piles of dried apricots and stalls selling water pipes and ornate silverware.
Isfahan is famed for its artisans, and the 400-year-old bazaar, built at a time when the city served as dynastic capital and a prominent layover point on the Silk Road, is central to showcasing to that identity.
As it happens, pride in history may underscore the regret in Arzani’s voice when he describes what has happened to his place of work.
“Sanctions,” he says, referring to the recent U.S. and western-backed clampdown on financial dealings with Iran, “(have) destroyed (the) bazaar in Isfahan.”
Arzani is not alone in this assessment.
Although the purported target of the West’s sanctions is the Iranian government — accused of pursuing a nuclear weapons program — the nature of the embargo restricts not only oil exports, a source of state revenue, but also electronic money transfers into or out of Iran. It’s a move that disrupts trade and creates a climate of economic uncertainty — even Iranians with means are afraid to spend on anything but essentials.
And entrepreneurs like Arzani are feeling the pinch.
“Maybe I’ll close,” he says, when quizzed about the future of the business he took over last year from his father. According to Arzani, his sales have dropped to two or three customers daily, down from a healthy 12 to 14 earlier this year before the sanctions.
Recently the Iranian government has shown success in developing some new techniques to facilitate cross-border money transfers, and the financial crisis has eased slightly, but buyers remain hesitant.
People are “waiting to see what happens,” explains a 53-year-old carpet dealer at the bazaar, declining to give his name for fear of angering local authorities.
As a city, Isfahan has lots to offer. But tourists are not thick on the ground here. In a traditional restaurant a stone’s throw from the bazaar, patrons sit cross-legged on raised platforms covered with Persian carpets and clustered around a splashing indoor fountain. Though the decor is sumptuous and the food excellent the tables are two-thirds empty at midday.
“The economy is sick,” ventures one employee. “It needs treatment.”
Tom Scott is a freelance writer based in Montreal.

Sunday 20 January 2013

Iran unable to get life-saving drugs due to international sanctions

    Iran unable to get life-saving drugs due to international sanctions

     

    Western measures targeting Tehran's nuclear programme have impeded trade of medicines for illnesses such as cancer
    Pharmacy in Iran
    A pharmacist in central Tehran: pharmaceutical firms have been refusing to sell Iran medicines due to difficulties in receiving payments caused by the ongoing economic embargo. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP
    Hundreds of thousands of Iranians with serious illnesses have been put at imminent risk by the unintended consequences of international sanctions, which have led to dire shortages of life-saving medicines such as chemotherapy drugs for cancer and bloodclotting agents for haemophiliacs.
    Western governments have built waivers into the sanctions regime – aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear programme – in an effort to ensure that essential medicines get through, but those waivers are not functioning, as they conflict with blanket restrictions on banking, as well as bans on "dual-use" chemicals which might have a military application.
    "Sometimes companies agree to sell us drugs but we have no way of paying them. On one occasion, our money was in the bank for four months but the transfer repeatedly got rejected," Naser Naghdi, the director general of Darou Pakhsh, the country's biggest pharmaceutical company, told the Guardian, in a telephone interview from Tehran.
    "There are patients for whom a medicine is the different between life and death. What is the world doing about this? Are Britain, Germany, and France thinking about what they are doing? If you have cancer and you can't find your chemotherapy drug, your death will come soon. It is as simple as that."
    European officials are aware of the potential for disaster reminiscent of the debacle of the UN oil-for-food programme imposed on Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and discussions are under way in Brussels on how to strengthen safeguards for at-risk Iranians. The US treasury says its office of foreign asset control is seeking to reassure banks that they will not be penalised for financing humanitarian sales.

    Friday 18 January 2013

    video clip to President Obama on Iranian children with cancer



    link video 

     


    Dear President Obama,
    Re: Would you also shed a tear for Iranian children with cancer?
    Applauding your humane reaction to the recent school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, I wonder if you would also shed a tear over the plight of Iranian people caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, with the sanctions imposed on them by the international community led by the American government.

    Tuesday 8 January 2013

    INDIAN MEDICINES TO HELP SICKS IN IRAN


    Indian medicines for Iran's patients
    By Vijay Prashad

    Between December 17 and 19, 2012, a business delegation from the Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil) went from Delhi to Tehran. The spur for the visit came from the Ministry of Commerce of the Government of India, which responded to a plea from Iran. The UN Security Council sanctions and the further embargo by the United States and European Union on Iran have created a major shortage of pharmaceutical goods in Iran.

    In November, the Iranian media published a list of vital drugs that are lacking, medicines for blood disorders, brain tumors, bronchitis, cancers, epilepsy, heart ailments, meningitis in HIV-AIDS patients, and multiple sclerosis. The media showcased the


    Dr Seyed Alireza Marandi, president of the Iranian Academy of Medical Sciences, wrote to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon on November 26, pointing out that the excessive sanctions by the US-EU have inflicted "pain and misery upon ordinary people". The US Treasury noted, however, "It has been the longstanding policy of the United States not to target Iranian imports of humanitarian items, such as food, medicine and medical devices." In October, the US Treasury introduced a "standing authorization" that permits US firms to sell some medicines and supplies without seeking permission from the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

    Marandi responded to this authorization in his letter to secretary general Ban. "While the United States and the European Union claim that their sanctions do not directly prohibit the export of medicines and medical equipment to Iran, the financial sanctions they have imposed on the world make it vastly more difficult - in many instances impossible - for Iranian importers to pay for these items, effectively barring their transfer to Iran."

    The US retorted, "If there is in fact a shortage of medicines in Iran, it is due to choices made by the Iranian government, not the US government."

    The question of choices and currency divides the Iranian government. Minister of Health Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi told Iranian television that only 25% of the US$2.4 billion set aside for pharmaceutical imports have been handed over to her ministry. Foreign currency was simply not available to pay for the imports. "Medicine is more important than bread," she said. "I have heard that luxury cars have been imported with subsidized dollars but I don't know what happened to the dollars that were supposed to be allocated for importing medicine."

    Foreign currency is not in hand, but oil exports to India have created a treasury of Indian rupees in Indian banks that are owned by Iran. If Iran could convert these idle rupees into Indian pharmaceuticals, it would solve two problems: its need for the drugs, and the paralysis of that money. Annually, India has a $10 billion deficit against its import of Iranian oil. This money would be helpful for Iran if it could be converted into Indian drugs.

    An opportunity for India
    During the Pharmexcil visit to Tehran in December, the Iranian government agreed to bypass production registration requirements, and the delegates met with Iranian buyers to discuss procedures for sales. After the visit, the Iranian government let the Indians have a list of products that are urgently needed, such as Amiodarone Hydrochloride, Amphotericin, Cefotaxime, Gadopentetate Dimeglumine, Iopromide, Mesalazine, Nicotinic Acid, Thiabendazole, Thioguanine, and Valganciclovir.

    If Indian pharma supplies the medicines on the list turned over by the Iranians to the Indian government on December 26, this would be the largest export of Indian drugs to date.

    On January 2, at Delhi's Observer Research Foundation, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, said that US-EU sanctions on Iran are an "opportunity" not a "threat". India's growing domestic pharmaceutical companies can now expand into Iran without care, he pointed out. "We view relations with India favorably," Jalili said.

    Jalili's comments echoed the remarks made by Yash Sinha, the Additional Secretary in charge of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. At a speech in mid-December, Sinha said that Iran remains "an important country" in the neighborhood, and that there was "great scope" for increasing India-Iran trade. Because of US-EU sanctions, Sinha pointed out, there is an opportunity to increase Indian exports to Iran "if payment and shipping related difficulties are overcome".

    Indian pharmaceutical firms have done well in 2012. The BSE Healthcare Index rose by 40%, far more than the market in general. This rise is largely due to the opportunities posed by the US generics market. As medicines lose their patents in the US, Indian firms have been well poised to seize those medicines and market them at the low prices that they now earn producers. This will be a regular revenue stream for some of the bigger players among the Indian producers.

    Some firms, such as Sun Pharmaceuticals, have cleverly used their US profits to buy up assets in the US market and elsewhere. But others have begun to look elsewhere, toward Malaysia into the market of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for instance, or else to Iran.

    The cache of Indian rupees held by Iran in the Indian banks and the eager Iranian market make this an attractive opportunity for the Indian pharmaceutical firms. The problem will be how to balance the interest in US generics and Iranian needs. The US "standing authorization" on drug sales provides an indication that Indian pharmaceuticals need not worry about its competing interests for the present.

    Political pressure from the US to isolate Iran has worked on the Indian government, but it has not been able to thwart the regional advantages entirely. That India's Sinha and Iran's Jalili both see the sanctions regime as a regional advantage and that they say so openly says a great deal about the limits to US authority in this region.

    One should not make too much of this of course. At the same time, the Indian government has promised to further reduce its oil imports from Iran and to accept the US offer of Saudi oil, despite the fact that Iranian oil is both sweeter (easier to process) and cheaper (lower transport costs). India is placed between the government's desire to please Washington and the realistic business needs of its growing economy.

    Vijay Prashad is the author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, foreword by UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali (London: Verso Books, 2013).

    (Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

    Saturday 5 January 2013

    Peace, Democracy & Poverty




    5th Open Panel
    Peace, Democracy & Poverty

    John Clarke
     Political & social activist
    Ontario coalition against poverty

    Sunday  Jan 13- 2013
    3pm to 6pm
    North York Civic Centre,
    Committee Room #4, from
    Canadian & Iranian Coalition for peace
    http://cicfp.blogspot.ca/

    Friday 4 January 2013

    Americans Really Learned Anything from the Iraq War?

    The Human Cost of Iran Sanctions: Have Americans Really Learned Anything from the Iraq War?

    by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett (source: Race for Iran)
    Wednesday, December 5, 2012

    Reuters

    When the United States and its assorted partners invaded Iraq in March 2003, polls suggested that as many as three-quarters of Americans may have supported President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war. By the time America’s military involvement in Iraq came to a close at the end of 2011, survey data suggested that, perhaps, Americans had been at least somewhat chastened by the experience. One poll, conducted by the Washington Post and ABC in the fall of 2011, showed that 62 percent of Americans thought that the war “was not worth fighting”; only 33 percent still believed the war had been a good idea.
    Of course, wars in which American soldiers die as well as kill always attract the American public’s attention. But it seems that Americans have hardly paid attention to the 12 years preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, during which the United States led another multinational coalition in imposing sanctions on Iraq that led to the deaths of more than a million Iraqis, half of them children. (These are the sanctions that then United Nations ambassador Madeleine Albright defended with the notorious statement, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we thing the price is worth it.”) Depending on whose estimates of civilian casualties from U.S. military action in Iraq one believes (the U.S. Department of Defense admits to just over 100,000), those sanctions may well have killed many more innocent Iraqis than the U.S. military did.
    Now, it seems, the United States—on a bipartisan basis, with the Obama administration every bit as complicit as anti-Iranian Democrats and Republicans in Congress—wants to go down the same road in its policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran. Of course, U.S.-instigated sanctions against Iran haven’t killed anywhere near as many innocent people there yet as sanctions killed in Iraq. But make no mistake: U.S.-instigated sanctions against Iran are now killing innocent people.
    On this point, we append below the text of a letter, see here, that Dr. Seyed Alireza Marandi, writing in his capacity as President of the Iranian Academy of Medical Science, sent to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon last month.
    United Nations Secretary General 26 November 2012
    His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon

    Excellency,
    As you are well aware, the United States and the European Union have imposed a financial and trade embargo against the Islamic Republic of Iran that effectively prohibits all types of financial transactions and trade between our country and all other member states of the United Nations. The objective behind these illegal and inhumane sanctions is to apply pressure on the Iranian government by inflicting pain and misery upon ordinary people. While the United States and the European Union claim that their sanctions do not directly prohibit the export of medicines and medical equipment to Iran, the financial sanctions they have imposed on the world make it vastly more difficult—in many instances impossible—for Iranian importers to pay for these items, effectively barring their transfer to Iran. These brutal measures have not only affected the overall welfare of the nation’s population, especially that of women and children, they have also led to a significant rise in suffering as well as increased mortality rates as a result of the unavailability of essential drugs and shortages of medical supplies and equipment.
    In line with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stresses the individual’s right to a standard of living that allows him or her to maintain health and well-being including unimpeded access to food and medical care, on behalf of the Iranian medical community, I call on you to do your utmost at least for the effective exemption of medicines, medical supplies, and foodstuffs from these unlawful sanctions. Since this type of brutal behavior alongside the successive wars and civil conflicts initiated or supported by these countries have already led to deaths on a daily basis of uncountable innocent people across the region, it is the duty of the United Nations and the global medical community to condemn such acts and to make every effort to stop such aggressive and rogue states from carrying out such atrocious policies against innocent populations.
    Yours sincerely,
    Seyed Alireza Marandi , M.D.
    President,
    Academy of Medical Sciences

    Some in the Western media are beginning to report on cases of Iranians, including children, with serious medical conditions who have died because U.S. sanctions made medicines essential to their treatment unavailable. Those people are every bit as much the victims of U.S. policy as if American pilots had dropped bombs on their houses, or American soldiers had entered their houses and shot them down.