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Sanctions
Jan Oberg
Sweden and Nordea Bank shamefully prevent humanitarian aid to Iran

Some time ago, I wrote about the flood catastrophe in Iran which a) affects up to 10 million people and b) has gone virtually unmentioned in Western mainstream media: Stop the ongoing US humanitarian terrorism against Iran and help its people!

Just in passing, not one of the more than 3000 media recipients of TFF PressInfo did, as far as I have been able to search, mention this issue in general, let alone refer to my analysis.

The conspicuous uniformity in perspective of what hits the mainstream media headlines and the uniformity of what does not – omitted news – is today such, that it is hard to believe that it is not orchestrated and that self-censorship isn’t a normal, everyday practice among editors and reporters.

So, on April 17, after having written the article, I did what I suggested at the end of it – I sent US$ 5 to the Iranian Red Crescent, merely as a test: Will it go through in spite of the primary and secondary sanctions installed by the US?

It looked like it did go through – but a week later I got this from the Swedish Nordea Bank:

It says:

“You have made a payment…
This payment has been blocked and returned to your account since Nordea does not do transactions to Iran because of the sanction in the country.
It is not possible to try to make the payment again.
If you have any questions… “

So, I called Nordea’s customer service and after some investigation, the answer I got was that this is a decision by the top management of Nordea: “We do not carry out any economic transactions with Iran because we consider that the risks are too high.”

The very kind lady could not explain what these risks were so I told her that the risk anticipated was presumably this: that the US Treasury would sue Nordea if they carried out such transactions since the US does not only impose primary sanctions on Iran but also secondary sanctions on countries and corporations that would ignore US policy and continue cooperation with Iran.

She was totally unaware of this larger perspective, of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (JCPOA), that the US had withdrawn from it that the US, therefore, was the only violator of international law (since the JCPOA is embedded in a UN Security Council resolution). She thanked me for this information.

My next step now is to write to the chair of the Nordea board, Thorbjörn Magnusson, and ask him to explain why and how Nordea participates voluntarily in implementing laws by the US that are both violations of international law and prevent humanitarian aid from reaching innocent Iran civilians who have suffered for years under these sanctions and also, in this situation, on top of it are hit by floods.

I remain seized of the matter…

Peace & future researcher + ‌Art Photographer

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