After returning to the blacklist .. What are Iran's options to prevent the collapse of its economy?

Al-Jazeera Net-Tehran

There was much talk in Iran shortly after the financial working group "missed" Tehran on the black list about ways to contain its negative repercussions on the national economy. What are the options available to Tehran to prevent the collapse of its national economy?

And less than 24 hours after the US Treasury imposed sanctions on five officials of the Iranian Guardian Council to deny thousands of candidates contesting the legislative race, the Financial Action Task Force on Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (FATF) has put Iran back on the blacklist.

While Iran denounced, through its Foreign Ministry spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, as describing it as "because of the Saudi, American and Zionist influence in controlling international mechanisms and politicizing its decisions," the governor of the Iranian Central Bank, Abdel Nasser Hamti, played down the importance of his country being included again in the black list.

The Iranian official considered that the international group's action "will not cause any problem for Iranian foreign trade or the exchange rate", and attributed the reason for this to the fact that the Iranian financial economic system managed to establish its relations with the world outside the framework of "FATF" in light of the unfair US sanctions, he said.

After nearly six years spent in Iran under the blacklist, the Financial Working Group temporarily suspended sanctions in 2016 after Tehran signed the nuclear agreement with the Six-Party Group (1 + 5), and mortgaged its final exit by accepting all the prevailing laws and decisions of the International Working Group.

Known options
In light of the growing fears in Iran of the repercussions of re-imposing countermeasures that would lead to the zeroing of foreign investment and stopping the activities of national companies abroad and the failure of international financial institutions to deal with the Iranian banking network, we asked a question about "the options available to Tehran to prevent the collapse of its economy" to the researcher The Iranian in political economy, Muhammad Islami.

There is no new solution in Iran after its return to the black list, according to the Iranian researcher, who believes that there is no need to search for new options to prevent the deterioration of the Iranian economy, which overcame US sanctions, but it does not negate the country's economy being affected relatively after the recent financial action group.

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, an Islamist considered that "the continuation of the economic and trade relations approach that Iran has established so far with some other countries" is the first and easiest option to nullify the effects of the blacklist sanctions, stressing that there are countries that do not originally believe in the policy of sanctions, and that circumventing them does not constitute a violation of international laws.

"The US sanctions have affected many Iranian sectors during the past two years, and there are no official relations between the Iranian banking network and its international counterparts," he added.

The same spokesman explained that Tehran's financial relations were not broken with the world as Washington wanted them to, and this constitutes the second option to prevent the deterioration of the national economy.

As for "circumventing the sanctions," it is the third option, according to an Islamist, who expressed his conviction of the efficacy of all means that Tehran has pursued during the past period to thwart the policy of extreme US sanctions aimed at zeroing Iranian oil exports and cutting Tehran's revenues from hard currency.

The Iranian Deputy Oil Minister Amir Hussain Zamani revealed a new way to sell oil and circumvent US sanctions by selling it in the "gray market" without going into details.

He said in a press statement that Iran has mobilized all of its resources to sell oil in this market and bypass the sanctions that we consider illegal.

Financial treaties and the Russian Swift
As for the newspaper "Jam Gym," it presented a fourth option under the title "circumventing (FATF) through monetary treaties", and called on the Iranian authorities to conclude bilateral or multilateral financial treaties with other countries, stressing that some neighboring countries including Russia, Turkey and Pakistan have previously submitted proposals for a contract Such agreements.

According to the newspaper, the last option will not be effective unless the parties to trade and financial treaties launch a system of transfers between them to replace the global system of "swift" for financial exchange between them.

And the "Institute of Financial and Banking Studies" of the Central Bank of Iran has announced the decision to join the national financial electronic communications system in the Russian swift, in order to combat the American banking ban on the global SWIFT system.

Common currency
As for the researcher at the "Contemporary History" Foundation for Studies, Reza Hajj, he suggested launching a common currency between Iran and its allies for financial exchanges between them, similar to the euro, in addition to giving them more attention in digital currencies.

He believed that the elements of transit from the hegemony of the American dollar are available in China, Russia and Iran, the axis of resistance rings, and even in Latin America, as well as the European desire to strengthen the euro.

In 2016, Moscow launched a system of financial communications similar to the global system of transfers "SWIFT" after the US Treasury threatened to impose a new batch of financial sanctions that prevented Russian banks and companies from using the global SWIFT, which Tehran welcomed and announced its joining at a later time.