EU Sets Up SPV for Iran Trade

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

Barter is the name of the game. The EU has set up a special-purpose vehicle to do trade with Iran without using dollars. So far so good but some diplomats are apparently worried Trump could extend the sanctions to cover barter. How do you do that? If the EU wants to send to Iran sheep in exchange for crude, how exactly will the US stop them, except by saying "We own you, we can do whatever we damn well please?" From here.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Marina Schwarz

[Guillaume Albasini + 851]

Another interesting point to follow is how the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system will manage the US sanctions on Iran. U.S. President Trump has threatened to impose sanctions on SWIFT if it doesn't remove a set of Iranian banks from the SWIFT directory. But SWIFT is based in Belgium and European law prohibits European businesses from complying with foreign sanctions unless they have secured EU permission to do so. As JP Koning says in a Blog post "This leaves SWIFT in an awfully tight place. Which of the two jurisdictions' laws will it choose to break? Assuming it can't get EU permission to comply with U.S. sanctions, then it can either illegally comply with U.S. law, or it can legally contravene U.S. laws. Either way, something has to give." 

The blog post is worth reading :  https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2018/08/europes-swift-problem.html