Tag: Iran – US relations

On the capture of US sailors & why #Iran hardliners are more scared of #Obama than the GOP

~ Meir Javedanfar

Last night I took part in a TV roundtable on i24 News about the capture of U.S sailors by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, after they had accidentally entered Iranian water. I was joined by Middle East analyst Ali Waked, Tom Harb and news presenter Lucy Aharish.

Topics discussed include:

  • The reaction of the Iranian economy to the news
  • Why the hard-line revolutionaries in Iran would prefer an aggressive tough-talking Republican president to win the next U.S presidential elections
  • and the role of Kentucky Fried Chicken in Iran – U.S relations (yes you read that right)

America maintained 1996 sanctions against #Iran so that it could steal its #gas market share

~ Meir Javedanfar

Lets cut to the chase: according to a new article, one of the main reasons why the United States has kept the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) until today is because America wanted to steal Iran’s potential Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) customers.

The United States was able to do this as the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) targeted European and Asian firms investing more than $20 million for the development of oil in Iran. “While ILSA did not explicitly ban investments in LNG, it made those investments more challenging”, the new article states.

Meanwhile, the United States used the absence of Iran to give its:

“own extractive industries an opportunity to fill the market demand that would have instead been available for Iranian LNG exports.”

So while Iran was under sanctions, the US developed its LNG sector. As a result, Iran has a non-existent LNG sector and can’t export Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), because of the sanctions, and yet the US in a few weeks will start its first LNG exports to customers around the globe.

You can read the entire article here.