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Iran Has Built a Global Financial Network to Bypass Sanctions
(Times of Israel) Gianluca Pacchiani - Udi Levy, former head of the Mossad's financial division, spent decades researching the money flows that allow the survival of terrorist groups and regimes with animosity toward Israel - chiefly Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran. He said in an interview that Israel should harness the coalition that came together to repel the recent direct attack on Israel by Tehran in order to halt the global money flows that constitute the lifeline of the Islamic Republic and that allow it to bypass U.S. and international sanctions. "These are exactly the players that we need if we want to achieve a strategic result against Iran - not just to punish it, but to change the situation in the Middle East by applying economic warfare." They should actively cooperate "to dismantle the network that Iran has built to finance terror around the Middle East....The Iranians built an unbelievable infrastructure to circumvent sanctions and be able to move money around the world to continue to finance all the terrorist infrastructure in all the Middle East - and their nuclear project." Sanctions against Iran have largely been ineffective because they remained on the declarative level but were often not implemented, he said. "Wikiran has revealed the whole infrastructure - how [Iranians] are moving the money from the central bank to the money changers in Iran, and from there to cover companies in China, Hong Kong and elsewhere. They open bank accounts in China and then move the money from there, especially to the Emirates." "We have the bank account numbers, the names of the companies, the names of the people, we have everything. And this is all happening with the full cooperation of the banking system in Western countries, even in the United States. Money has been transferred and used freely, without any disturbance." "Now, we have the opportunity to do something together. Israel's partners need to freeze the assets, confiscate them, and close the companies....The Iranians have no alternative infrastructure. It would take them years to rebuild it. It would be a disaster for them."