Constraining Iran the Financial Way
By Michael Jacobson
Daily Star (Beirut), April 27, 2007
For the past year, senior United States Treasury officials have traveled the world, highlighting for foreign governments and the private sector the danger that Iran's illicit activities pose to the international financial system. Treasury has lobbied foreign audiences on the need to employ targeted financial measures against entities supporting Iran's terrorist activities and its weapons of mass destruction programs. While the department's outreach has been quite successful overall, its efforts have been hindered by two serious obstacles unrelated to the substance of the case it has been making about Iranian activities.
First, no foreign finance ministry has an in-house intelligence office. As a result, the ministries generally do not receive all of the relevant intelligence on Iran that is in their governments' possession. Without this information, the finance ministries are not in a position to assess the scope of Iran's illicit financial activities, and the dangers this presents to the integrity of the global financial system. While this information may reside elsewhere in their governments, frequently only the finance ministries have the necessary expertise to analyze the financial intelligence and to fully comprehend its ramifications for the financial sector. Foreign policymakers then must decide what action to take against Iran without a complete understanding of the risks involved.
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