IRAN NUCLEAR: FOCUS - TEHRAN PREPARES ECONOMIC WEAPON

Bernard Lewis wrote in the Wall Street Journal (as reprinted on Drudge and Newsmax.com) that Iran may be planning some sort of cataclysmic response to the UN demanding that it stop enriching uranium. This is supposed to correspond with the Muslim version of the rapture. Google "Hidden Imam" if you want to know about it. In the meatime, assuming that the world will not begin to end on August 22, there's a more important issue to deal with.

Pre-emptively bombing Iran will throw us directly into a World War, which nobody wants. There's a million analysts out there that will tell you all the various reasons why it won't happen. Maybe Israel will do something, as some signs point to, but probably not. So barring any unforseen calamity stemming from Iran itself, the only other option for the Western world to punish Iran with for going forward with uranium enrichment is UN sanctions. Now even if Russia and China were to agree to such a thing, which they won't, AKI has some information related to why France and other EU nations most likely won't agree to sanctions in the end as well.

So, this tells us a few things: First that the UN is completely toothless. It couldn't disarm Hezbollah and it can't stop Iran from making an atomic bomb. That's the sum total of the UN's effectiveness. It simply exists to plant egg squarely on the face of the US and nothing more. It's only a matter of time before Iran does in fact get the bomb and so long as they don't actually use it or do something equally insane, the world cannot and will not stop them, bottom line.

Iran has practically rejected a UN security council resolution threatening economic sanctions if it fails to suspend uranium enrichment by 31 August. And as a document obtained by Adnkronos International (AKI) suggests, Iran means to show how much the West has to loose if a boycott is imposed.

The 11-page document prepared by authorities in Tehran offers an analysis of Iran's economic relations with Western countries using data from Iran's central bank, the Bank Markazi. The document rethorically poses as its main question: "who will have the courage to boycott the Islamic Republic?"

Europe would lose some 13 billion euros in exports and 10 billion in imports a year, mainly in gas and petrol, the document estimates.

As far as Italy, Iran's main commercial partner in Europe is concerned, cutting ties with Iran would bring a loss amounting to two annual budgets, a fact recognised recently by Italian foreign minister Massimo D'Alema.

Relations between the Islamic Republic and the West however are not limited to commercial exchanges.

Iran has debts worth 27 billion dollars with European banks. Moreover, the Iranian government has 25 billion dollars deposited in banks in Europe which could be withdrawn any time soon, causing significant debts.

Ten major oil companies including Italy's ENI have invested 15 billion dollars in South Pars, the world's largest gas field in the Persian Gulf off Iran. China has signed investment accords in the energy sector worth 25 billion dollars.

Finally, the document talks about the 'oil weapon'. Today 40 oil companies, including three from Italy, import every day 2.5 million barrels of crude oil. Japan, with its 541,000 barrels imported each day, would be the hardest hit.

The economy of South Korea, whose exports to Iran in the past three years totalled 26 billion dollars, would be hugely damaged by a boycott on Tehran.

Overall, experts who drafted the document eestimated that were Iran to stop exporting crude oil and gas, the price of oil a barrel would amount to a minimum of 100 dollars but could reach 125 dollars.