Israel Matzav

'We're Swiss and we don't do sanctions'

With everything else going on with Iran, this story, which may be more important than any of the sanctions stories, is about to slip under the radar screen.

With the World's major powers trying to reach an agreement on the best and most effective way to sanction Iran, an Iranian official announced that Iran is ready to sell one million cubic meters of natural gas per day to Switzerland under a 2008 deal between Iran and Switzerland. Under the original terms of the deal, delivery was not supposed to start until 2011.

A day after US President Barack Obama said the international community was “moving along fairly quickly” toward imposing new sanctions on Iran, which defiantly began enriching uranium to a higher level, a senior Iranian oil official said his country is ready to provide Switzerland with about one million cubic meters of natural gas per day, Iranian Press TV reported on Wednesday.

"Already Iran is ready to start its gas exports to this European country based on the contract," the managing director of National Iranian Oil Co. Seifollah Jashnsaz reportedly told Mehr news agency.

In March 2008, the National Iranian Gas Export Company and Switzerland's Elektrizitaetsgesellschaft Laufenburg signed a 25-year deal for the delivery of over 5 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

Jashnsaz also reportedly said that Switzerland and Turkey are engaged in talks to pave the way for the delivery of Iranian gas, which would initially amount to 1.5 billion cubic meters per year to Switzerland, to increase to an annual 4 billion cubic meters by 2012.

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:14 PM