Stop Fundamentalism –Two main trading countries with Iran in the Gulf region, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar announced last week they will no longer issue a Line-of-Credit for trade with Iran.
The Central Banks of the two countries have called on national banks not to issue any more LCs for Iranian traders, say reports.
The UAE central bank has been monitoring any trade with Iran closely to observe details of trade between the two countries.
UAE plays the role of a mid-station for trade with Iran. Traders import their items to this country before exporting it again to Iran. That is a major way for Iran to circumvent many of the trade sanctions imposed by the International community. While the official figure released by UAE government say that this country’s trade with Iran was about 5 billion last year, observers says the figures is actually at about 10 billion. There are at least 8000 Iranian traders in UAE.
The United States has recently imposed heavy sanctions for any dealing with the Iranian Central Bank. This should make matters complicated for the Gulf countries to continue business as usual with Iran.
