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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 26, 2007 / 10 Tamuz, 5767

Starving the mullahs

By Dick Morris & Eileen Mc Gann


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The conventional wisdom says that we have two choices in confronting and containing Iranian nuclear ambitions — United Na tions sanctions and diplomacy, or a military strike to knock out key nuclear sites. But neither option is a good one. U.N. sanctions are relatively tame and don't go to the heart of how to cripple the Iranian theocracy. A military strike, meanwhile, would solve the regime's major problem: how to gin up popular support and stay in power. Any attack risks causing nationalism in Iran to soar, rallying the public around a now-unpopular government.


But there is a way to strike hard at Iran and encourage a change in regime or at least in policies: We can stop investing in companies that invest in Iran. Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan Pentagon official, and his group disinvestterror.org list 485 companies that do business in Iran.


Dennis Ross, a longtime Middle East negotiator, told me recently that he felt that disinvestment "could be important in bringing about a change in Iranian policy" on nuclear weapons.


Of course it could: The Tehran regime gets 85 percent of its revenues from the energy sector and needs the cash to pacify the population. With high unemployment and low job growth, the government hangs on by the skin of its teeth by subsidizing prices — gasoline costs 30 cents a gallon in Teheran.


But oil exports have dropped year after year as domestic demand has grown 10 percent annually. Despite rising oil and gas prices, energy revenues to the government have dropped from $55 billion in 2006 to an estimated $44 billion this year.


Current estimates are that Iran's oil exports will drop in half by 2011, and hit zero three years later. The regime desperately needs new investment to prop up its oil production.


It's up to the public — and to our leaders — to see that Western companies don't provide that investment.


Already this month, California, Ohio and Florida have passed bills requiring their state pension funds to cut off any investment in these companies. State Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx/Westchester) has proposed similar legislation in New York. He says that $20 billion of our state pension-fund assets are now invested in companies that invest in terror sponsoring nations. (The list includes most major oil companies and international banks.)


But state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli doesn't have to wait for the Legislature to act. He should withdraw all investments by New York's state-employee-pension fund (the No. 2 in America) from companies that do business of any sort with Iran, Syria, Sudan or North Korea.


American companies are already banned from investments in Iran — but not so, European ones. Thanks to former Sen. Al D'Amato, a 1996 law imposes sanctions on foreign companies that invest in either Libya or Iran — but President Bush, like Bill Clinton, has consistently exercised the law's national-security loophole to waive it.


But the Europeans can't stop us from selling off the stock of companies like Shell, Repsol or Total that do business with Iran. The disinvestment drive is only a few months old, but it has already pushed Repsol, a Spanish company, and Shell, a Dutch firm, to reconsider their Iranian investments.


It's no sure thing - but disinvestment is a safe way to weaken the Iranian regime, and one we don't need approval from the United Nations — or Washington — to execute.

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JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Outrage: How Illegal Immigration, the United Nations, Congressional Ripoffs, Student Loan Overcharges, Tobacco Companies, Trade Protection, and Drug Companies Are Ripping Us Off . . . And". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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