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What about the tattoo, loss of an eye tooth and the gaining of a monkey?
Iran Super Thread- Merged
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Those are all implicit.
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McG
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With video here:Nah....hardly a war at all
U.S. forces destroy three Iranian oil tankers
U.S. Central Command forces struck and disabled three Iranian oil tankers on September 5, hours after Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired ballistic missiles at two U.S. Navy warships patrolling the region, according to a CENTCOM statement. Both American vessels,defence-blog.com
Halifax Tar
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That's pretty tame.
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Well sure, you're not there.
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So the “economic D-Day” Trump threatened on Iran’s trade/economic partners turned out to be a damp squib. Only two branches of Egypt’s second largest bank, both in the UAE, were targeted. Sanctions won’t take effect for another month.
It’s telling that the US has lost so much global power that it can only target a couple branches of a bank from a regional ally. Iran’s largest partners in the PRC and Russia are unscathed. But of course we knew this would happen.
phillipspobrien.substack.com
It’s telling that the US has lost so much global power that it can only target a couple branches of a bank from a regional ally. Iran’s largest partners in the PRC and Russia are unscathed. But of course we knew this would happen.
Midweek Update #26: The USA Sanctions A Few Branches Of Egypt’s Second Largest Bank!
Also: US Failure To Understand War Reaches A Crisis Stage; Understanding The Price Of Oil
phillipspobrien.substack.com
The USA Sanctions A Few Branches Of Egypt’s Second Largest Bank!
Sometimes you do have to chuckle at the pickle the US government has gotten itself into. On August 24, Secretary of the Treasury Bessent announced Operation Economic Outcast, which he said was going to be a brutal campaign of economic “asphyxiation” against Iran. The Treasury Department itself called the move an “Unprecedented Campaign Against Iranian Regime on Economic D-Day.”
Well, this week the Treasury Department followed up its bombast with some specific action—and it was underwhelming to say the least. As I said last week, there is one test of whether the US is serious in this campaign, and that is if the US government is willing to sanction Chinese banks and institutions.
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/midweek-update25-sanctions-without
Of course, sanctioning China is now something that the USA is far too weak to do. And considering the fact that the Trump administration is trying to rehabilitate Russia, it will never do the second most effective thing it could do to hurt Iran—which is pressure Russia. As such, what the US actually did is sanction (and even “sanction” might be too strong a word) the UAE branches of Egypt’s second largest bank, Banque Misr UAE. Here is the Treasury announcement of the action.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...641-8410-4506-a698-9821c6c7ca23_1400x787.jpeg
A Look Of A Man Who Just Showed The Egyptians Who Is The Boss
The target was about as weak as one could imagine, and even then the actual sanctions taken against Banque Misr were small beer, to put it kindly. Quoting from the US announcement, what the government is doing is actually only going after a few small branches of the bank in the UAE, not the bank itself. Pay attention to the last sentence in the Treasury Department’s press release on the move (bolded below).
“The rule would also require U.S. financial institutions to take reasonable steps not to process a transaction for a correspondent account in the United States of a foreign banking institution if such a transaction involves Banque Misr UAE and to apply to their foreign correspondent accounts special due diligence that is reasonably designed to guard against their use to process transactions involving Banque Misr UAE. This finding and the accompanying proposed special measure apply only to Banque Misr UAE, as defined in the NPRM, and not to Banque Misr operations in any other country.”
Moreover, these actions do not even go into effect right away—there is a 30-day period of notice first, and the US government could easily (and quietly) walk away from this move in that window. Certainly, the Egyptian government did not seem particularly worried. The Egyptian central bank (CBE) released a statement putting this weak move into perspective, as was reported in this story (see excerpt).
“The CBE affirms that this measure is limited to the bank’s branches in the UAE and only to its dollar transfers,” the statement said.
It added that the measure does not affect any other Egyptian bank and does not extend to the Banque Misr’s operations inside Egypt or to any of its overseas branches.
“The Central Bank of Egypt affirms the strength and resilience of all banks operating in Egypt,”
When it came to actually sanctioning China, it is clear that Trump was stung by the way this weak move was reported. When he was asked in the Oval Office why he did not sanction any Chinese concerns, his response was defensive.
"Who said I'm not? I mean, who said I'm not? You don't know if I'm doing it. Well, I don't have to announce everything, do I?"
This might be the sanctioning China version of “two weeks”, for those of you who understand how Trump wriggles out of difficult questions. Indeed in the same press conference, Trump did his best to defend China from accusations of aggressive spying against the USA.
“Somebody was saying about China, ’What about China? We hear they’re spying.’ We spy on them too. So it goes,”
So, aggressive action against China is not going to happen from the USA. Nor will anything happen to Russia, Iran’s other great supporter. It has to be noted that the US is now going to great lengths to reintegrate Russia into the world economy. Just yesterday it was announced that the US government has invited the Russian finance minister to attend the upcoming G-20 summit in North Carolina.
The US weakness against both China and Russia is obvious. The Chinese indeed are nowhoovering up Russian oil from the world market, buying it whenever they can and not in the slightest bit worried that the US will make them suffer for doing so.
Look, the US strategy, if it could be implemented for a long time (maybe it would take years) could indeed create a great deal of pressure for Iran. The reality, however, is that the US is the one with time not on its side (more on that below)
One thing that I have not seen reported anywhere else is that Iran has made as much, if not more, this year compared to last year. This is not because Iran has sold as much this year as last in terms of volume, it is because the price of oil is so much higher that even smaller volumes of sales would have generated about the same income. I have put together this comparison between Iranian reported sales and income generation covering the period of March-August this year and last year at the same time. Note, there is a significant range for the income this year—though the midpoint is approximately the same as last year.
There are some conflicting sources on this—some of the ones I used can be found in this footnote.1
So even if sales are down this year to .6 of the level last year, the rise in prices would have made that difference up. If the Iranians between March-August 2026 sold .7 of the amount they sold in 2025, they would have made more.
All this is a way of pointing out that the US strategy will take time, and actually Iran arguably has more time than the USA (see below). And if the USA cannot actually afford to sanction Chinese and Russian entities working with Iran, the time balance in Iran’s favor will only grow.
Maybe if the US had sanctioned the third largest Egyptian bank…
Gordon Dundas/
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I suspect that for Trump sanctioning sleazy banks comes with a problem.
He might either been invested in them or they may be holding one of his notes.
Could be embarrassing...and potentially expensive.
He might either been invested in them or they may be holding one of his notes.
Could be embarrassing...and potentially expensive.
