rolling the banks

China Matters has a good post up on financial warfare against Iran; arguing that part of the aim of which is to lean on major international banking institutions to present China with the choice of working with them or keeping ties with Tehran. That causes Beijing to switch to supporting a tighter sanctions regime in the UN, leaving the Russians isolated as Tehran’s sole backer, with the idea being that in those circumstances they too will roll over. Or so the story goes.

The general issue is being framed as a straight choice between comprehensive economic blockade and war:

So, in response to a potential weaponization of Iranian nuclear assets that will occur, if ever, years after the Bush administration leaves office, we’ve got a false choice between a sanctions policy that failed against North Korea, and an aggressive military strategy that failed in Iraq.

Comments

[gabriel]

I like your blog and I feel we share sufficient common ground for a link to each others blogs to be mutually beneficial.If you agree to link then please contact me at 'An Unrepentant Communist'

http://unrepentantcommunist.blogspot.com/

on the commments page of the current post,and I will immediately link your blog to mine.Looking forward to hearing from you.
Gabriel in County Kerry Ireland

[Chris Williams]

I am the only unrepentant communist out there who's making a point of not visiting Gabriel's blog, to pay him back for all this bleedin' boring spam?

[dsquared]

I am not sure about this one. There is probably literally not enough money in America for them to persuade HSBC not to do business with China. If the anti-Iran sanctions had the effect of impeding even American banks in the rush for Chinese contracts, my guess is that it would be the Iran sanctions that ended up getting dropped.

[jamie]

Yeah, that's pretty much the CM guy's take on it too. I notice that there seems to have been a wave of pushback from companies within the EU over the past couple of weeks too.

[ejh]

Chris - no. And if I do visit his blog it'll be to spam it.