The US puts the freeze on Iran's Bank Sepah

The US government put another piece of the puzzle in place to disrupt financing of Iran's nuclear weapons program, by banning its fifth-largest state-owned bank from using the American financial system or banks and freezing its assets in the US.

Bank Sepah joins Iran's Bank Saderat as well as a number of other Iranian ad jihad supporting banking institutions on the blacklist, something the Bush Administration has consistently done fairly well in the war on jihad. This is not a little thing - the banking system of the world runs through New York, including the Arab world, which is why Hamas was reduced to smuggling cash in suitcases. No bank in its right mind wants to risk having its funds frozen and it officers interrogated and joining the other blacklisted banks on the pariah list.

To say the least, this makes financial institutions and investors very leery of having anything to do with the Islamic Republic.

"Financial institutions and other companies have begun to re-evaluate their business relationships with Iran. Many leading financial institutions have either scaled back dramatically or terminated entirely their Iran-related business," said Stuart Levey, the treasury's under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, at a press conference Tuesday.

"They have done so of their own accord, many concluding that they did not wish to be the banker for a regime that funds terrorism, defies the UN security council in pursuing a nuclear program and deliberately conceals the nature of its business."

Or, ummmm...miss out on doing business in the US or take a chance on landing on the blacklist themselves!

This is a policy the Bush administration has been persuing for over two years now.

American citizens are now forbidden from handing any direct or indirect transactions involving the bank, which the US says is financing the Iranian Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO), which oversees all of Iran's missile industries and manages the country's missile program.

"Bank Sepah is the financial linchpin of Iran's missile procurement network and has actively assisted Iran's pursuit of missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction," Levey said. "It's very important that they don't have the means of delivery."