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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Ayatollahs Have To Import Gasoline
2006-07-14
At least 14 of Iran's parasitic cleric class are each worth over $100,000,000. They are happy to get their rake off of an efficient economy that has to import almost half of its refined oil products. Oil export gains will give the Arabist leaches even more plunder possibilities. However, regime change would end the blood-sucking tyranny.
Teheran (AsiaNews) --- "A gift of God for the Iranian people": this is how Ayatollah Khomeini described oil, and in Iran, a litre of fuel still costs less than a litre of drinking water: eight euro cents. Fuel is not only tax free, it is subsidized by the state: this scenario generates border trafficking and allows many Iranians to own a car and to be "private" taxi drivers in the absence of efficient means of public transport.

Iran lays claim to independence in the entire production cycle of nuclear energy, but it is incapable of refining its own oil: 30 out of 70 million litres consumed per day must be imported. Each litre that is re-imported costs the Iranian state 40 euro cents per litre: 20% more than in 2005, as Hojjatollah Ghanimi Fard, international affairs director of the National Iranian Oil Company, confirmed yesterday. Due to price increases, the 2.5 billion dollars allocated by the annual budget to these imports will only last until mid-August.

On the other hand, oil price hikes, fuelled by instability and by Iranian provocations, should lead to gains of 54 billion dollars for Iran this year, continued Ghanimi Fard. This automatic income will certainly help to finance many things in Iran, but it will also weaken the economy and feed inflation. Oil production, increasingly expensive on the market, is becoming more and more costly and difficult: in the Iranian GDP (Gross Domestic Product), oil is no longer a motor of economic growth: only +0.6% last year (compared to +5.4% of the Iranian GDP). Iranian oil production is decreasing.

In this scenario, Iran's domestic "free" petrol policy is irrational, especially if considers that 250,000 litres are wasted by gas st ation clerks alone! In Iran, cars, mostly very old and not catalyzed, have a very high consumption and they create huge ecological problems. Nearly 10,000 people die in Teheran each year because of air pollution. For Iran, the badly managed manna of oil is not only a curse for the economy in the medium-term; it is one of the roots of a human and social problem.
Posted by:Anginens Threreng8133

#3  We think alike OP. Shut off the exports. We don't have to take out a single refinery.
Posted by: Deacon Blues   2006-07-14 20:06  

#2  The Iranians make money from oil exports. Shut down the exports, and you shut down the flow of money. It wouldn't take much to totally destroy Iran's export capability. I'm sure Israel could do it with their diesel subs and sub-launched cruise missiles. They have a reason: Iran supports Hezbollah. We ought to let them do it, and see what happens.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2006-07-14 20:01  

#1  I've been saying for a couple of years, ever since the first story of a shortage of refined products first came out that thats how we can hurt them. Don't bomb their squalid little enrichment facilities, destroy a refinery everytime they commit some dispicable act. After about 2 or 3 they will be in a real pickle. People in Iran riot at the slightest anomoly in the gasoline supply. Refineries are easy to hit, they have no proteciton, no anti-aircraft batteries, very flammable, and would make a dazzling display. A couple of pipelines added to that and I think we would have their attention.
Posted by: bigjim-ky   2006-07-14 14:36  

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