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TweetI thought Mahmoud I’mADamnNutJob promised that the sanctions were nothing to worry about. Guess he might have been off.
Tehran, 25 Sept. (AKI) – As the United Nations moves to consider fresh sanctions to counter Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the country’s largest shipping company has already been hit by restrictions.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and its 18 affiliates were included on a list of companies and individuals compiled in Washington two weeks ago for providing logistical support in relation to Iran’s nuclear programme.
A request by France to the United Nations’ Security Council to extend boycotts to other companies could affect the movement of trade and commerce between Iran and the Mediterranean region.
A joint Italian-Iranian venture known as Irital told Adnkronos International (AKI) it had made no changes to its shipping operations “if you exclude falls linked to seasonal falls in the market”.
The company, based in the northern Italian city of Genoa, was created in 1992 by IRISL and Fratelli Cosulich SpA and is the Italian agent for the Iranian company.
But local operators told the Maltese daily, Independent, that they are worried that any extension of sanctions against IRISL would stop them from having commercial relations with the firm, that has a dozen vessels in Maltese ports every week.
Iran’s largest shipping company has told The Financial Times that it is confident it can protect its business from the impact of US sanctions imposed earlier this month.
The company told the London business daily the American allegations were “baseless” and the sanctions were irrelevant because Iran has had no shipping in US waters or assets in the US for three decades.
Mohammad-Hossein Daajmar, director of IRISL, did not rule out some increased costs as a result of the US sanctions but doubted the company would face any any decrease in the volume of transactions.
More than 60 percent of the company’s shipping transactions were with Asian countries, particularly China, he said.
“We are thinking about concentrating on Asian and African markets, and abandoning the west,” told a spokesman for the Iranian Shipping Society to AKI.
“We have already put a number of measures in place to get around these and possible future sanctions,” he said. “Many other Iranian companies, after a period of difficulty, have managed to normalise their commercial relations so they could get around the sanctions without too many problems.”
The IRISL, which claims to be the biggest shipping company in the Middle East, has a fleet of 143 ships and carries about a third of Iran’s imports and exports worth more than 70 billion dollars in 2007.
Further sanctions against Iran were in doubt on Thursday, after Russia pulled out of crucial talks in New York.
Moscow withdrew from the multilateral talks planned for the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly amid tensions with the United States over Russia’s military action in Georgia.
And of course Russia backed out. They are the ones building and supplying the nuclear facilities for the mullahnazi regime.
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