(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Since Tehran has changed its foreign exchange reserves in European countries into gold in the past three years and transferred them to some Asian countries, EU states were pinned in their plan to freeze CBI assets in the European countries.
In October 2010, Iran's Gold reserves hit "record high" as the Central Bank took "preventive measures" to avoid a possible asset freeze by Western countries. Official reports say that Iran has at least 100 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves.
It should be noted that Iran's abundant reserves of gold and various foreign currencies, which serve as a back-up to foreign exchange reserves, have put the Islamic Republic in an unparalleled position in the world. Iran CBI’s independence from western currencies prevented the negative effect of US and EU financial crisis on Iranian economy after worldwide financial crisis of the recent years.
On the contrary, some European giant companies have financial claims over their oil and non-oil contracts with IRI and Tehran can retaliate EU by freezing these financial demands.
For instance, the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company has declared that it does not owe some 2 dlrs billion in oil shipments as claimed by Italian giant oil company ENI. In the meantime, Italian officials claim that ENI was receiving oil shipments from NIOC in lieu of an estimated 2 dlrs billion in debts owed by the Iranian firm. Italy is said to have signed up to the proposed EU ban on Iranian oil imports on condition that ENI's oil-for-debt shipments not be affected.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti set out that position last week, saying that 'the embargo should not include imports that do not give Iran additional financial resources' - implicitly excluding the deliveries to ENI. Italy is under serious financial crisis and this country which is one of major European customers of Iran’s oil is concerned about EU embargoes’ negative effect on its declining economy.
Furthermore, even in case of embargos on Iran oil, the European countries have postponed sanctions for a period of six moths to avoid its negative effects including the immediate raise of oil prices. Three European countries of Italy, Spain and Greece are completely dependent on Iranian oil and finding new energy sources to replace Tehran’s oil won’t be easy for them in the near future.
In addition to Turkey, Greece, Spain and Italy in Europe, Asian customers of IRI’s oil involving China, India, Japan, South Korea plus South Africa have also refused the sanctions or asked to be exempted from it.
Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. They have initiated lots of international and unilateral sanctions on Islamic Republic of Iran under the pretext of such baseless accusations.
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