Special Report: Iran's cat-and-mouse game on sanctions

[dipsydoodle]

(Reuters) - Just before noon on a sticky, overcast Saturday morning earlier this month a truck carrying two white containers waited at an electronic checkpoint to leave Singapore's main port. The containers bore the bright red letters IRISL, the initials of Iran's cargo line, which has been blacklisted by the United Nations, United States and European Union.

Anchored just off Singapore's playground island of Sentosa that same day, the container ship Valili was also stacked high with IRISL boxes. A couple of miles to the east the Parmis, another container ship, also carried IRISL crates. Shipping movements data tracked by Reuters shows the Parmis had pulled into Singapore waters from the northern Chinese port of Tianjin early that morning.

The ships and containers are key parts in an international cat-and-mouse game, as Iran attempts to evade the trade sanctions tightening around it. Washington and European capitals want to stop or slow Iran's nuclear program. They believe Iran Shipping Lines(IRISL), which moves nearly a third of Iran's exports and imports and is central to the country's trade, plays a critical role in evading sanctions designed to stop the movement of controlled weapons, missiles and nuclear technology to and from Iran.

IRISL would not comment for this story. Last June the company said in an interview that there was no evidence it had been involved in arms trafficking. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful and that IRISL has no links with any weapons program. Tehran complained vigorously last June when the European Union followed the United States with beefed-up sanctions that banned new contracts with IRISL. A United Nations resolution forces all states to inspect IRISL's cargo.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/15/us-iran-smuggling-idUSTRE81E0JA20120215

[leveymg]

1. Like the Iraq War, all sanctions do is demonstrate the weaknesses in US power

The sanctions regime will not stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear program. It just makes them more convinced the west is out to get them, and determined to find workarounds to the elaborate systems we try to put together. Which they will, and have done before.

We don't learn, because we assume that we're invulnerable and omnipotent. But, sanctions are like the M1A1 tank -- they're big and scary and are packed with expensive technology, until you learn how to defeat them with a few old artillery shells, a length of oil pipe, and a copper plate.

Then, the whole world sees how it can be done. Q.E.D.