News US sanctions against Iranian banks are less likely to have further impact as they are already under multilayer restrictions, a monetary expert and former banker said.
The US Treasury Department on Thursday imposed fresh sanctions on 18 Iranian banks in a bid to totally cut off the country from the world's financial system and harm the government’s depleting revenues.
“The sanctions are less likely to have much effect on banks’ relations with the outside world. Links to the international financial system were severed two years ago,” the Persian-language newspaper Sharq quoted Ahmad Hatami Yazd, a former chief executive of Bank Saderat Iran, as saying.
Hatami Yazd pointed to the long list of global banking services Iranian lenders are deprived of due to the mounting US penalties, echoing the stance of economic experts that the new sanctions “are more propaganda” and their financial impact would be limited.
“They have imposed the maximum pressure against Iran [and] cannot do more,” he said.
Asked whether he means that the sanctions will have no impact on the economy and people’s livelihoods, the senior banker said decades of sanctions had crippled Iran’s economy to a critical level.
“Heightened volatility in the currency market, rising consumer and real estate prices are the result of sanctions,” he concurred.
Financial and baking officials have rejected the potential impact of the new banking restrictions, saying that it cannot hamper Tehran’s efforts to import basic goods, namely food and medicine.
Governor of Central Bank of Iran Abdolnasser Hemmati on Thursday described the new hostility by the Trump White House as propaganda designed more “for political ends inside the United States than having economic impact on Iran’s economy”.
Hit in the Past
In the same vein, Hamid Qanbari, the CBI vice governor for international affairs, said the newly sanctioned banks were already hit by previous US sanctions.
Stakeholders in the private sector also commented on the subject. Sharif Nezam-Mafi, head of Iran-Switzerland Joint Chamber of Commerce said the sanctions will not influence humanitarian trade between Iran and Switzerland.
In a talk with IRNA, he pointed to the trade channel between Iran and Switzerland, known as the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Agreement (SHTA), saying that it will continue its work irrespective of the Covid-infected Donald Trump’s belligerence.
SHTA become operational in January to facilitate food and medicine import to Iran and supply Swiss goods without falling foul of US sanctions.
The Swiss trade channel came into operation after the US granted waivers for using a portion of CBI’s overseas revenues to import basic goods and pharmaceuticals.
“Based on negotiations that resulted in the creation of SHTA, the new and past sanctions are irrelevant,” Nezam-Mafi was quoted as saying.
He said the channel was involved in importing three cargos of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment since mid-August.
Food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are exempt from the sanctions that Trump imposed on Tehran after he walked away from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear agreement in 2018 and announced tough restrictions on Iran’s banking, insurance and shipping industries.
