Iran Focus

London, 20 Oct – Iran is among the cases scheduled to be reviewed in this week’s FATF (Financial Action Task Force) summit. More than 800 officials representing 204 jurisdictions, the IMF, UN, World Bank and others came to Paris for FATF Week to discuss the global combat of financing terrorism. Meanwhile, factions within Iran argue whether the Islamic Republic should join the FATF or not.

FATF Week began on Sunday, October 14th, and continues through Friday, October 19th. Important issues to protect the integrity of the global financial system, and to improve safety and security across the world, are on the agenda. Three out of the four laws that are necessary to avoid being black listed by the global anti-money laundering body, are still unclear.

Iran Focus

London, 20 Oct – Iran is currently facing their biggest challenge to date – reimposed US sanctions – and they are looking for any allies to help them evade the impact of this.

The mullahs have crafted a plan with three objectives:

• Make sure Iranian oil exports can finance “essential expenditure”, i.e. salaries of civil service and military personnel

• Ensure that there is enough foreign currency in the domestic market to slow down the fall of the national currency and avoid inflation

• Make sure that crucial items, i.e. industrial parts to keep major factories going, remain available

Iran Focus

London, 19 Oct – Iran has tried to follow suit with Russia’s social media campaign to provide false information over social media, albeit in a more clumsy manner.

Social media giant Twitter released data showing the activity of the two nations on its platform earlier this week. There were over two million images and 10 million tweets. Iran was responsible for more than one million tweets and hundreds of profiles.

Twitter called on experts and analysts to look into the data it had released in its efforts to understand just how the two countries were able to misuse the platform on such a large scale.

Iran Focus

London, 19 Oct – Tensions are rising between the US and the EU over the issue of Iran sanctions – Europe has announced a “special purpose vehicle” to evade US sanctions and the US has threatened to blacklist any company that uses it – but they need to come back together to fight the real and present danger of the Iranian Regime.

Europe’s special purpose vehicle to handle transactions between Iranian and European companies will not help evade sanctions on the Iranian Regime. First, no company wants to be blacklisted by the US and face all of the problems that brings.

Iran Focus

London, 18 Oct – Earlier this year, Twitter had to suspend 770 accounts for engaging in “coordinated manipulation” that appeared to originate in Iran. According to research published on Wednesday, the accounts were made to appear as those of foreign journalists and concerned U.S. citizens, and were being used to spread political propaganda.

YouTube, which is co-owned by Facebook and Google similarly spotted and took down Iranian content, some of which had been linked to state-owned media, according to an analysis by FireEye, a security firm that first uncovered the activity.