Today President Obama signed an executive order placing stricter sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, as well as all Iranian assets ‘deemed to be in U.S. control, including foreign branches of American banks.

Under previous sanctions U.S. banks were required to reject Iranian banking transactions. Today President Obama gave them the power to seize and freeze those assets.

The U.S. Treasury Department said these new sanctions would ‘affect assets of all Iranian ministries and state-owned entities, including the central bank that processes Iran’s oil revenues’.

But interestingly, no one gave an estimate of how much funds would actually be affected.

At one time, Iran was aggressively hostile about any more banking sanctions being applied to their Central Bank. They called it a red line that would be considered an act of war. But that was a while ago.

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Official Iranian media is currently quoting the Deputy Chairman of the Iranian parliament’s Energy Committee. He said on Saturday, “So far the ambassadors of several European countries such as France, Greece, Germany and Italy have desperately rushed to the parliament to call for restraint against passing a bill on stopping our oil exports to Europe.”

No confirmation on the ‘desperation’ part. Actually no confirmation as yet on any of it.

Also on Saturday, elements of the Lebanese Army deployed in the Lebanese village of Wadi Khaled, on the Lebanese border with Syria. The Hariri-oriented opposition to the government, and most especially opposing Hezbollah, described the move as ‘Syrian orders’. The government stated the reason was to flush out elements of the Free Syrian Army, which is said to have bases in that area.

This incident gains import when considering the amount of instant play being given to a quote attributed to Hezbollah by Lebanese mainstream media. It is almost perfect in its ability to make almost everyone froth at the mouth. It does not even need to be true. In the present charged atmosphere, the statement has a life of its own.

“Hizbullah will not allow the fall of the Assad regime even if it means launching a war with Israel.”

Mainstream Lebanese press went on to say that their ‘…Hizbullah sources did not rule out the possibility of “surprises emerging, aimed at turning attention away from the Syrian crisis.”’

The classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbs* sometimes features its two heartwarming characters playing Calvinball, a game that rascally but endearing Calvin made up. Unlike frumpy, rigid grownup games, Calvinball has no rules whatsoever. You make it up as you play it.

The Iranians seem to know this game. To be fair, most governments seem to have discovered this fun game, and are playing it more and more as time goes by. But today we take a look at Iranian Calvinball.

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For background, see posts HMS Daring Leaves Gibraltar, HMS Daring Arrives Gibraltar, and Middle East War Scheduled for January 16-31, (which I must admit was a little precocious.)

HMS Daring left Gibraltar January 21. It took 9 days to get to the Suez Canal, transiting last Monday, January 30, according to commercial global naval media reporting information apparently directly from an official Royal Navy press release. That’s maybe 2,200 miles, depending on the sea route she took.

That would infer she averaged a little over 9 knots… a fraction of her top speed of at least 29 knots. Maybe she loitered a bit, waiting for the other British ships sent to the Middle East after her departure, HMS Ledbury and HMS Westminister, to catch up with her? Maybe she had a layover somewhere along the way? Maybe she experienced one of her chronic propulsion system breakdowns? Maybe we should take public press releases of the Royal Navy with a grain of salt?

From the Canal, through the Red Sea, to the Sea of Oman is very roughly 1,800 miles. If Daring maintained the same reported speed as from Gibraltar, that would put her in the Sea of Oman maybe Tuesday, steaming by the Yemeni island of Socotra perhaps Sunday.

Or she could have revved up her engines and be off the shores of Iran now.

You know the story about the blind men sent to India to find out what an elephant was like. One feels the elephant’s trunk, says it’s like a great snake. One feels the tail, says it’s like a mouse, and so on.

There was a study done with twenty-four Emergency Room surgeons. They were each asked to mark the place on a volunteer’s body where they would insert a needle to release air if a patient had a collapsed lung (tension pneumothorax). The correct place is the second intercostal space on the side that has the collapsed lung, just above the third rib, lateral to the mid-clavicular line. That makes it the upper part of the chest more than halfway to the side, so that you miss things like the heart when you insert the needle.

None of the trained and certified ER surgeons marked the correct place. None. Several marked insertions that would have pierced the pericardium, and probably the heart itself. Some would have hit the liver. Not very reassuring, is it?

Today’s international spotlight was on when Iran would have a nuclear weapon.

The timing of a preemptive strike by Israel, or the U.S., or a coalition, would ostensibly be based on the perception of when Iran could weaponize the nuclear material they have.

Today was the last day of the 12th Annual Herzliya Conference (see previous post). This year has turned into an especially important event, globally spotlighting the viewpoints of top military and security officials from Israel and other nations.

Iran’s nuclear program was, in all meanings of the phrase… the elephant in the room.

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Iran has taken their top card off the deck and placed it at the bottom, for now.

The pending legislation for shutting off oil to the EU has been taken out of play, for now.

Iranian media talks instead about the EU embargo of Iranian oil hurting the EU more than it does Iran. They mention the price of gas in Ireland already having doubled during the EU debt crisis, and project more economic dislocations throughout the EU as the sanctions against Iranian oil falls into place. No more threats by Iran about immediately turning off the oil spigot to the EU.

Instead, Iran appears to be pinning all its hopes on continuing meetings and negotiations with not only the IAEA, but the G5+1 group of top Western nations.

The IAEA has issued a statement that the next meeting in Iran will be held February 21 and 22. Director General of the IAEA Yukiya Amano said today, “The agency is committed to intensifying dialogue. It remains essential to make progress on substantive issues.” Spoken like a true bureaucrat. Dilbert’s boss comes to mind.

Iranian official media reports that Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Saleh said Iran ‘is always ready to settle its nuclear issue in an appropriate way’. He announced that Iran will ’soon send a letter to the six world powers to reiterate its readiness for talks, and he thinks that those talks with the G 5+1 “…will be a successful meeting, because I feel the other side is now interested to find a way to settle Iran’s nuclear issue.”

So the recent get-together between Iran and the IAEA appears to have born fruit.

But it is it fresh fruit or old fruit?

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I hated disco. But now that it’s been gone for decades, I feel a certain nostalgia about it. Bad songs bring back happy memories of that time, which have nothing to do with disco.

Which has little to do with the IAEA leaving Iran today. Except that we may soon be remembering this time as the good old days, as bad as they may be. And except that this visit may have been the last dance, the last chance for a little love between Iran and the West.

Herman Nackaerts took his IAEA team home today, leaving Iran precisely on the schedule he had insisted upon before arriving, even though the Iranians kept pressing him to stay just a little bit longer.

All sources say that the only thing the team did was talk. No visits to any facilities. Just talk.

The best thing Iranian media, official or otherwise, could say about the affair was that the meetings were ‘held in a positive and constructive atmosphere’.

Then the spin fell off, and a little more temper hit the official English language Iranian media. Headline: ‘Iran to Ban IAEA Inspectors If They Lie’

A member of Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee is quoted as saying that if the IAEA publishes an ‘“unrealistic report” on Iran’s nuclear activities and “misleads the global community” after leaving Iran, they must be denied entry into the country’.

Looks like the date did not end with a kiss on the porch.

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The status of legislation in the Iranian Parliament appears to be back where it was on Saturday.

The boilerplate text being used in more than one official Iranian article is, “… members of the Iranian parliament finalized a draft bill on Saturday on cutting the country’s oil exports to the European states in retaliation for the EU’s oil ban against Tehran. ”

So we’re back to ‘finalized.’ But no mention of debate or vote. No mention of a timeframe until they hand it to their Guardians Council for rubber stamp approval, the only other step needed for it to be put into effect immediately.

Some specifics of the legislation were publicized Monday, also reused as boilerplate. Vice-Chairman of their parliament’s Energy Commission, Nasser Soudani, is quoted as having said on Saturday, “The bill has 4 articles, including one which states that the Islamic Republic of Iran will cut all oil exports to the European states until they end their oil sanctions against the country.”

He also said that another article of the bill ‘requires the government to stop imports of goods from those countries which are a party to these sanctions against Iran’.

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Confusing? Yes. Because everything is morphing back and forth very quickly. But bear with me through the changes, and it will get more solid before the end of this post.

Sunday morning, Iran time, an important United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team, led by Deputy Director General Herman Nackaerts, Head of the Department of Safeguards, arrived in Tehran for a much-heralded three-day “mission to Iran to investigate allegations of secret military dimensions to the Iranian nuclear program,” as official U.S. media put it.

This visit seems to have been seen by the Iranians as a last-ditch, do-or-die, final chance to bring the IAEA around to their point view regarding their country’s uranium enrichment. As a welcoming present, all mention of the Iranian legislation that would immediately stop the flow of Iran’s oil to the European Union, and which was to be passed as early as today… disappeared from Iranian media.

Except for a very confused yes-no-yes-no article early Sunday morning in official English-language Iranian media…

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An incorporeal specter is wafting on the winds of war, unseen or at least unreported by Western sources. Is it that our media mavens do not believe in it? Or are squinching their eyes tightly shut because of the horror it manifests?

Or is that overstating the case? You decide.

The issue is legislation in the Iranian Majlis (mäj’lis - parliament) that would immediately halt oil exports to the European Union. This would circumvent the phase-in period for EU sanctions on Iranian oil.

Everyone is talking about how Iran may or may not close the Strait of Hormuz, and speculating how a military closure would be partial and gradual as the EU sanctions slide into place, and Europe secures oil from the nations of the Arab League. Frankly, how could the closure be gradual? Once military actions start, it is difficult to comprehend how they would not escalate logarithmically in a flash. Perhaps literally.

This legislation bypasses all that, and accomplishes much the same thing for the Iranians without a military component.

One can only wonder how great a shock it would be for world markets. Greece, one of the EU’s shakiest economies, depends heavily on Iranian oil, which they have been receiving on credit. Other EU countries have varying dependencies on oil from the sands of the ancient Persian empire.

Now… the burning question. How likely is it to happen? (more…)