In Case You Missed It: UANI's Currency Campaign Featured in The New York Times

In Case You Missed It: UANI's Currency Campaign Featured in The New York Times

"Mark D. Wallace ... Called for an Economic Blockade on Iran to Increase the Pressure"

Defiant Message Amid Iran Currency Crisis

By Rick Gladstone

The New York Times

October 6, 2012

Senior Iranian clerics intensified their anti-Western criticism on Friday, calling the near-collapse of the national currency this past week a consequence of an American-led conspiracy to wage an economic war on Iran, and predicting that the pressure would ease.

The message, highlighted in the main weekly sermon at Friday Prayer, appeared to be an effort to show a unified and defiant response to the crisis over the currency, the rial, which lost roughly 40 percent of its value against the dollar in a stampede of selling to black-market currency traders by Iranians worried about their country's economic stability. ...

That was the first significant demonstration of anger over the devalued rial, which has injected new uncertainty into the daily lives of Iranians by worsening the already high inflation rate. ...

Proponents of stricter economic penalties against Iran have been emboldened by the currency crisis, calling it evidence that the sanctions are working.

Mark D. Wallace, chief executive of United Against Nuclear Iran, a New York-based group that has worked to persuade multinational companies to sever business ties with Iran, said that by its calculation Iran's currency had fallen by 80 percent in the past year.

In a statement on the group's Web site, he called for an economic blockade on Iran to increase the pressure, saying "the regime must be forced to choose between having a nuclear weapon or a functioning economy."

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