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Trump's Plan to Squeeze Iran's Economy Will Depend on the UAE
(Wall Street Journal) Summer Said - President Trump's effort to squeeze Iran into submission will depend heavily on curbing one of the country's biggest economic lifelines: Dubai. The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday that it has suspended financial and economic transactions with Iran, potentially threatening Tehran's access to a major source of imports and a financial back door to the world. For weeks, the Trump administration has been cajoling the UAE to crack down on Iranian financial networks operating in the country, telling Emirati officials that targeting money flows linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could have a greater impact on Tehran than the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. If implemented broadly, the UAE could significantly curb Tehran's access to foreign currency and global trade networks. But severing those links will be difficult. Oil revenues, foreign-currency trades, and payments for Iranian entities have long moved through shell companies and exchange houses in Dubai, often without an Iranian name appearing on the transaction. Cutting off Iran would also require Emirati authorities to crack down much more aggressively on opaque financial and trading activity, which could hurt Dubai's role as a freewheeling global hub for commerce, capital and re-exports. "When you look at Iranian sanctions evasion and Iran's ability to earn money from illicit oil sales, Dubai is a major hub for illicit financial flows," said former U.S. sanctions official Max Meizlish, now a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "The UAE taking action against direct trade and financial activity is important, but the reality is that a great deal of indirect activity flows through banks in Dubai supporting Iran's shadow-banking and illicit-financing operations."