Word: tehran
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Beyond the fate of the hostages in Tehran, a new worry loomed last week: Was the energy-squeezed and inflation-dazed world economy about to fall victim to the crisis between the U.S. and Iran? Though the U.S.'s cutoff of imports from Iran and its seizure of that nation's assets in U.S. banks was a necessary response to irrational provocations, the actions also transformed petrodollars and petroleum itself into even more dangerous weapons in economic brinksmanship. That, in turn, added a new and alarming element to the crisis...
...theory, at least, those purchases could be easily replaced by swapping: oil companies could exchange Iranian crude with other companies that have equal amounts of non-Iranian petroleum. Nor in theory should the freezing of Iranian bank assets prove especially disruptive to money markets or the banking system. The Tehran government's estimated $6 billion in petrodollar holdings is only a fraction of the more than $150 billion that big international banks move back and forth among each other every day. Withdrawing the Iranian funds would, by itself, hardly cause much more than a momentary ripple...
...also been going to Thailand for about 15% of its imported rice, and the Thais have plenty more where that came from. Were the U.S. to embargo shipments to Iran, food produced elsewhere would simply move from one international middleman to another and end up in the bazaars of Tehran...
...almost all have shuttered their plants and offices, or turned them over to local workers to run, and brought their U.S. employees home. Johnson & Johnson's plant in Tehran, which made baby products, was expropriated in August. GM still claims a minority interest in a Tehran auto factory, but it has been run by Iranians since GM pulled out the last five Americans and a Swiss a year ago. Last December Du Pont closed its fiber plant in Isfahan...
However, PepsiCo is still shipping concentrate to its Iranian bottlers, and Continental Telephone is proceeding with building a phone cable network for Tehran. One of the largest projects had been the joint venture between California's Fluor Corp. and West Germany's Thyssen to build a $750 million, 200,000 bbl.-a-day oil refinery at Isfahan for the National Iranian Oil Co. The refinery has been a high-priority item for the Iranian government, which fears shortages of kerosene and diesel fuel during the winter. Last week, when the refinery was a month away from partial operation...