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Iran’s IMF Request Shows Just How Desperate Tehran has Become
By Andrew Korybko
Global Research, March 20, 2020

Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-imf-request-shows-desperate/5706926

The combination of crippling American sanctions, the compliance with the aforesaid by the US’ “comprehensive global strategic partner” India (formerly one of Tehran’s top energy partners) out of fear of so-called “secondary sanctions”, the uncontrollable outbreak of COVID-19 in the Islamic Republic, and the authorities’ mismanaged response to all of this has put Iran on the brink of collapse and made it desperate enough to appeal to the IMF for a $5 billion emergency loan for the first time in six decades.

Requesting an IMF loan usually doesn’t mean that a country is on the brink of collapse, but the situation is altogether different in Iran’s case after the Islamic Republic asked for $5 billion worth of emergency assistance to help it deal with a series of interconnected and increasingly cascading crises that threaten to totally upend everything that it’s achieved since 1979. The combination of crippling American sanctions, the compliance with the aforesaid by the US’ “comprehensive global strategic partner” India (formerly one of Tehran’s top energy partners) out of fear of so-called “secondary sanctions”, the uncontrollable outbreak of COVID-19 in the Islamic Republic, and the authorities’ mismanaged response to all of this has putting the country on the path to regime change, as the author warned in his earlier analysis titled “Iran: Regime Change By Coronavirus?“, with the global pandemic serving as the catalyst for possibly bringing this dark scenario into fruition.

It’s important to draw attention to the fact that Iran didn’t publicly request any emergency aid from its Chinese or Russian strategic partners, which suggests that it either might have done so behind the scenes and was rebuffed (whether for political reasons possibly related to Russia’s “balancing” strategy in Moscow’s case or simply because both of them might just really need every spare dollar to support their own economies) or didn’t even think that it could rely on either of them at all to make it worth asking in the first place. Whatever the case may be, one thing is certain, and it’s that the talk of a so-called “multipolar alliance” between Russia, China, and Iran was a premature forecast about a possible scenario that hasn’t yet arrived, nor might it ever if the situation continues to worsen in Iran as a result of its potential failure to secure the emergency economic aid that it’s urgently requesting (and if China doesn’t make an offer at the last minute to save it).

On the topic of China, the author feels obligated to remind the reader about the viral fake newslast September alleging that China will invest a whopping $120 billion in Iranian connectivity projects, which caused a collective psychosis in the Alt-Media Community at the time. The author warned everyone to “Be Skeptical, The Latest Report About China & Iran Is Likely False“, but that didn’t stop delusional “wishful thinkers” from imagining that their “dreams” came true and that the People’s Republic inexplicably decided to invest what would be equivalent to two CPEC’s worth of funds into mysterious projects that were never publicly announced nor hitherto leaked. It clearly didn’t make any sense for anyone to believe those false claims, yet nevertheless, the Alt-Media Community didn’t defy the expectations held of it in falling for this fake news ruse. The very fact that Iran is now requesting emergency IMF aid proves beyond any doubt that China never invested the $120 billion.

Whether the Alt-Media Community as a whole accepts this “politically inconvenient” reality is another matter entirely, but it’ll also be interesting to see whether they’ll be critical of Iran for asking the IMF for help considering the far-reaching economic strings usually attached to its loans.

The Alt-Media Community has been at the forefront of global awareness efforts exposing the means through which the IMF is exploited by Western countries as an instrument of control over its loan recipients’ economies, after which they usually make unrealistic “structural reform” demands that more often than not end up causing the same economic crises that their “assistance” was supposed to prevent in the first place, all in pursuit of geostrategic goals. Iran is at risk of being victimized by this scheme, but it might not have any options left.

All in all, the news that Iran is requesting $5 billion worth of emergency assistance from the IMF proves how desperate it’s become after mishandling several interconnected and increasingly cascading crises that have quickly brought it to the brink of collapse. Neither Russia nor China were publicly approached, and it’s unlikely that either of them will help Iran since they would have already done so had they intended to instead of letting their strategic partner all but humiliate itself by basically begging the international financial structure largely run by its Western enemies for urgent aid. The future of Iran is therefore dimmer than it’s ever been since the Islamic Revolution, though that doesn’t mean that regime change is imminent. Its people’s praiseworthy resistance might very well thwart this dark scenario from materializing, though it seems all but inevitable that far-reaching socio-political and economic changes will still occur as the country struggles to survive these crises.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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