The Cow is Dying!

Yahoo News: A bill introduced by Reps. Mark S. Kirk, R-Ill., and Robert E. Andrews, D-N.J., who set up a congressional working group on Iran's nuclear programs two years ago, coincided with angry protests in Tehran against fuel rationing.

While Iran is one of the world's largest oil producers, a lack of refineries compels it to import nearly half the gasoline used by Iranians.

Besides the rationing, which sparked street demonstrations in Tehran and criticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the government boosted gasoline prices last month.

Under the proposed congressional legislation, any company that provides Iran with gasoline or helps it import gasoline after the end of the year could lose its access to American customers through sanctions.

"This is becoming the critical weakness of the Iranian government, meaning its dependence on gasoline," Kirk said in a telephone interview. "The riots show the gasoline shortage is a growing danger to the Iranian regime and a diplomatic opportunity for Western countries to force Iran to adhere to international nuclear rules."

Most of Iran's gasoline imports come from Persian Gulf states and India, brokered by the Dutch trading house Vitol. Most of the gasoline tankers are insured by Lloyds of London.
On Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved legislation designed to strike at investments in Iran.

That bill, championed by the committee chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., would end the Bush administration's power to waive sanctions against foreign companies that invest in Iran.
"Our goal must be zero foreign investment," Lantos said.

A State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, agreed Thursday that "we need to do everything that we can to continue to raise the stakes in Iran in terms of its nuclear program."
He said the United States was working with friends and allies in Europe and elsewhere to gradually ratchet up sanctions against Iran.

"We are in the process now of looking at what additional measures we can add," Casey said.
However, the spokesman also said the administration had to move carefully in order to hold together "the broad international coalition that we've worked to build."
Several countries that do lucrative business with Iran have balked at applying severe pressure on the Tehran government.

Has the IRI ever been held accountable for the incalculable damage they have wreaked upon both in terms of costs (including opportunity cost) and risks to Iranian nation's economic and strategic security and sovereignty? If you and I had managed a corporation , large or small and ran it to the ground like this, we would be fired and put in jail for being so corrupt or incompetent. These idiots are starving their own "cash cow" (oil revenues) by not re-investing or maintaining it. How masochistic can you get to do this to yourself? Are they that blind? They should all be impeached.


Those who rule the Islamic Republic are dysfunctional in practically every way imaginable. They have never been called to account for their irresponsibility and unwillingness to face the reality of their own making. The West,particularly the left, and the reformers have encouraged them, enabled them, and generally sheltered them from reality for their own short-sighted profiteering . What will they do when the cow stops producing milk and begins to die?