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A Crack in Europe's Consensus on Iran
(International Business Times) Ilan Berman - Back in January, the European Commission voted on a series of punitive economic measures against Iran, chief among them a pledge by member states to cease imports of oil from the Islamic Republic by mid-summer. Yet less than three months later, the effort is in danger of being undermined from within by a Greece in economic free-fall. That is the contention of a new intelligence report by Securing America's Future Energy, or SAFE, a Washington, D.C.-based energy policy group, which argues that the deepening fiscal woes of the Papoulias government in Athens have forced it to increase its reliance on Iran as a source of energy, with potentially disastrous consequences. Greece consumes a quarter of Iran's total oil exports to the Continent of approximately 700,000 barrels daily. At least two other Eurozone nations - Spain and Italy - are also dependent to a significant degree on Iranian oil. The writer is vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council.