Iran's economic woes could make the country unstable and vulnerable

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4425815.html

Dec. 26, 2006, 7:21AM
Iran faces crisis as its oil exports drop, study says
Loss of revenue is threatening the country's stability

By BARRY SCHWEID
Associated Press


WASHINGTON — Iran is suffering a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports, and if the trend continues income could virtually disappear by 2015, according to an analysis published Monday by the National Academy of Sciences.

Iran's economic woes could make the country unstable and vulnerable, with its oil industry crippled, Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University, said in the report and in an interview.

Iran earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. The decline is estimated at 10 percent to 12 percent annually. In less than five years exports could be halved and then disappear by 2015, Stern predicted.

For two decades, far longer than its designation by President Bush in January 2002 as part of the "axis of evil," the U.S. has deployed military forces in the region in a strategy to pre-empt emergence of a regional superpower. Iraq was stopped in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but a hostile Iran remains a target of American threats.

The U.S. military exercises have not stopped Iran's drive. But the report said the country could be destabilized by declining oil exports, hostility to foreign investment to develop new oil resources and poor state planning, Stern said.

[bahrbearian]

1. Whats BARRY SCHWEID think of the U.S. economy ?

and how about "The decline is estimated at 10 percent to 12 percent annually. In less than five years exports could be halved and then disappear by 2015, Stern predicted." I suppose the decline of exported oil will have no effect on us.

[Tempest]

2. This article is bogus

Iran's oil revenues are up 15% in 2006.

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=164417&Sn=BUSI&IssueID=29269