$100 billion Iran-China energy deal ready to be signed

Mehr News Agency ^ | 4-29-06 | Mehr News Agency

[soccer_maniac]

TEHRAN, April 29 (MNA) – Chinese Ambassador to Tehran Lio G. Tan has said that the oil and gas deal between Iran and China has been thoroughly studied by experts and is ready to be signed. The Chinese ambassador was clearly referring to an energy agreement between Tehran and Beijing which is worth over 100 billion dollars.

“No country can prevent the deal,” the ambassador told the Mehr News Agency correspondent in Tehran last week. When asked whether China was under U.S. pressure not to sign the deal, Lio responded by asking, “Would the U.S. export oil to us if it didn’t let you (Iranians) give it to us?”

[demsux]

Is this similar to "guns for hostages"?

Now it's "cheap goods for Iranian oil".

[anymouse]

Now it's "cheap goods for Iranian oil".

No, it is nukes and missiles for oil.

I doubt the Imams give a damn about supplying the Iranian people with plush toys and DVD players. They do like the fact that China has no qualms at selling them any military hardware that they want including nuclear and missile technologies that will allow Iran to blackmail Europe into letting them continue building up their nuclear arsenal.

As a side benefit China gets to ensure they get a steady supply of crude oil at under market prices - you get a big discount when you by it $100B at a time.

If it makes you feel better, every time you buy something made in China you are helping arm Iran with nuclear weapons that eventually will be aimed at us.

[jonrick46]

China is trying to get oil at a discount now that it has sucked up so much oil that the prices are getting hard for them to pay. The strategy is to eat up the supply so hard that the price goes into triple digits. They are hoping that it will push the western countries into economic chaos. Too bad they are amateurs in capitalism. They will have their efforts smack them right in the face.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

If it makes you feel better, every time you buy something made in China

And the toothpaste I just bought at Wal-Mart is funding the Chicoms! Let's just drag out the old straw man instead of focusing on the real reasons why things are Made in China. It's so much easier.

[Paul Ross]

Perhaps the deal was cooked a long, long time ago...and China has already "paid" for the oil and gas...

Inside the Ring

The Gertz File

April 21, 2006 Notes from the Pentagon

China-Iran ties
President Bush this week sought help from Chinese President Hu Jintao to help resolve Iran's defiance in its nuclear program, which the Bush administration thinks is moving toward nuclear weapons in the next few years.

What is being played down by U.S. officials who are seeking closer ties with China is the fact that China has been directly involved in Iran's nuclear and missile programs for more than a decade. National security officials tell us the effort to enlist Beijing's support on Iran is like Samuel Johnson's quip about a second marriage: the triumph of hope over experience.

Classified U.S. intelligence reports dating from the early 1990s reveal that Beijing has been covertly backing Iranian nuclear efforts, as it did in Pakistan, with training and equipment.

One October 1991 report disclosed that the state-run China Nuclear Energy Industry Corp. was working with Iran's government to supply nuclear technology for a reactor facility being planned in western Iran.

A top-secret U.S. intelligence report from April 1996 revealed that a Chinese delegation of technicians traveled to Iran to take part in building a uranium enrichment facility at Isfahan. The report said: "The plant will produce uranium products that Iran can use to make fissile material for nuclear weapons." The technicians were the advance team who were planning construction of several nuclear-related plants. A month earlier, in March 1996, a group of Iranian nuclear technicians traveled to China to study technical documents for the nuclear construction.

Then in January 1999, the Pentagon's Joint Staff produced a classified intelligence report that revealed new details of how China was supplying Iran with materials and equipment for Tehran's nuclear and missile programs. The same month, the CIA revealed that China had concluded a deal to sell Iran special materials used in making nuclear fuel rods. In March 1999, a group of Iranian technicians were sent to Beijing University for training in missile guidance and development. That year, China also supplied the Iranians with advanced C-801 anti-ship cruise missiles.

By early December 1999, the National Security Agency reported that technicians from China and Pakistan were working at the Iranian underground nuclear laboratory at Isfahan. The site had not been declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency until 2003.

China was not the only nuclear supplier. Russia and North Korea also were helping the Iranian nuclear and missile programs.

Details of Chinese covert support were first reported in this newspaper and in Bill Gertz's 2004 book: "Treachery: How America's Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies."

[anymouse]

Dollars go to China to pay for cheap stuff produced by slave labor.

China takes profits from selling cheap stuff to build nuclear weapons and other military technology.

China trades nuclear weapons and other military technology to Iran for oil.

It doesn't take a nuclear scientist to figure out why buying Chinese made goods is bad for America.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

China and Russia want a nuclear Iran to act as a foil against the USA. Only a full blown war with Iran will change the inevitable.

[Paul Ross]

Which real reasons things are Made In China?

There are so many to choose from. Most of which, in an unenforced unilateralist U.S. free trade posture are beyond any reasonable U.S. policy makers control...thus leaving the U.S. administration with the ONLY OPTION: reversal of trade policy. Back to revocation of all Chinese MFN.

China has more or less dared our kept politicians to do it...and politely laugh out of our earshot when nothing happens.

Meanwhile they roll along and flagrantly increased their trade discriminatory practices, their IP theft, their espionage, their human rights and religious atrocities...and their welching on contract promises.
[ E.g., China was supposed to buy 60 Boeing 737's. Last year already!... Instead they are finally only buying ....ta da!/// 16?! ]

Just stringing the old "Main Enemy"...the USA... along... And its so much easier when the dupe is already self-deluded...and believes in "Personal Diplomacy." Even when he knows he is dealing with a totally inflexible, completely party-controlled zealot like Hu!

Interesting coverage up in Canada of the talks...being far, far more candid and less liberally obfuscatory or euphemistic (kind of surprising)!:

The U.S. is simmering over the $202-billion US trade deficit with China -- the single largest imbalance the U.S. has ever recorded with another country.

Hu offered general promises to address the imbalance, but likely fell short of the demands of members of Congress who have called for punitive tariffs on Chinese goods.

"We have taken measures and will continue to take steps to resolve the issue," Hu said.

Bush put a positive spin on the meeting.

"He recognizes that a trade deficit with the United States is substantial and it is unsustainable," Bush said of Hu. "Obviously the Chinese government takes the currency issue seriously, and so do I."

Bush was referring to the fact the U.S. believes China has deliberately undervalued its own currency against the dollar by 40 per cent in order to maintain a significant trade advantage.

Bush said: "We would hope there would be more appreciation" in allowing the currency to rise with market forces.

Rather interesting that the Treasury Dept. officially won't admit that China is manipulating its currency for trade advantage. Even though under law it is supposed to inform Congress if that's the case. No ifs, no buts, no room for evidentiary or ideological dispute. The Chinese are pumping in more than $195 billion every year into their currency manipulation scheme...and that isn't evidence of manipulation...? Treasury Secretary Snow should be in Hell. I think it just froze over.

[Paul Ross]

China and Russia want a nuclear Iran to act as a foil against the USA.

Indeed they do. They have been plotting this for more than a decade, after all. They expect us to defeat ourselves while we have been sucked dry of industry and technology, oil access, military readiness....and Capital that we control.

They are preparing the "ground" of the conflict. Bush is constantly letting them take the initiative. Constantly failing to confront them over their schemes. Wallowing in sappy bon homme'...and being taken to the cleaners. Sigh.

Meanwhile, it reminds me how much better Reagan was at ascertaining and exploiting the principles of Sun Tzu:

The most profound method the sage commander employs to attain victory is the extraordinary and the orthodox. He engages the enemy with what they expect. This is the orthodox, that which is familiar and understandable, what the enemy can easily see. It confirms their projections. However, the sage commander conquers the enemy with what they never imagine. This is the extraordinary. It is not any particular action but simply what the enemy does not expect.

To do so, he works with the enemy's perception of the world. If the enemy believes the sage commander's position to be protected, they will not attack; it does not matter if it is undefended in fact. More than anything, the sage commander must understand his enemy's processes of thought. Whatever the nature of someone's thinking, strong or weak, it forms a pattern. As such, it systematically includes and excludes. These are both its strengths and limitations. If the sage commander can discern the enemy's patterns, he knows what is orthodox within it. Then, in response, the extraordinary is apparent to him:

I think Reagan always had a more profound and penetrating understanding of the enemy. He got into their ideology in real depth...and made a life-long study of that enemy...communism. He knew how to play to their expectations, and against them. Thus, he was a truly sage commander fighting them.

I am convinced from what I have seen of President Bush that he does not begin to understand almost any of the unreconstructed Communists who masquerade as if they were. And he constantly takes the camouflaging assertions of the enemy at face value. Not understanding them...or challenging them. Certainly at the ideological level, anyways. Hence he doesn't stand a chance against these kinds of enemies. His attitudes make him a liability for the likely survival of the Republic against the lethal vipers we have so ill-advisedly nurtured.

[demsux]

If it makes you feel better, every time you buy something made in China you are helping arm Iran with nuclear weapons that eventually will be aimed at us.

Exactly my point.

This country has become desensitized to the economic war that we are fighting against various enemies, including China.

[tobyhill]

My bets on China convincing Iran to go with the Russian Plan and have the Uranium processes there and strictly for power plant use. $100 billion is a lot to lose if somehow the oil from Iran to China can't get there.

[A. Pole]

China NEEDS oil.

[JeffersonRepublic.com]

[As a side benefit China gets to ensure they get a steady supply of crude oil at under market prices - you get a big discount when you by it $100B at a time.]

It might look like a discount today when the prices are at historic highs.

Last time we had a real energy crisis was under Carter in the 70's. It caused people to buy smaller cars and the government to control consumption through regulations. The results were oil prices crashing to $10 per barrel in the early 80's.

It wouldn't feel like a discount to be locked into a $100 billion contract with in a global recession followed by a crash in the oil markets.

[anymouse]

We don't know what price per barrel that $100B buys. China might be getting it at $10/barrel for all we know. When you buy in that large of a quantity I bet you get a good discount - especially if you are paying it in nuclear technology.

[GOP_1900AD]

The SCO .... the worlds largest and worst ever Axis. We will likely live to cringe at any thought of it ....