If there is one country that has been a victim of trade embargos and sanctions, it is Iran. The tense relationship between Iran and the United States of America dates back to the seventies during the reign of Shah and the US has been imposing trade embargos and sanctions on Iran time after time. Currently, the country has started feeling the economic pressure as a result of the announcement by the US that no foreign bank should deal with Iranian banks or financial institutions because of the countrys stance on terrorism. Iran is one of the countries in the Middle East that is feared to be pursuing a terrorist agenda through its nuclear missile program and these sanctions are aimed at taming the country which poses a global terrorist threat alongside North Korea. The sanctions also affect Iranian companies especially those linked with terrorism or nuclear proliferation. These sanctions are supposed to supplement the efforts of the United Nations Security Council which had imposed some limited sanctions on Iran because of its stance on terrorism (Kaveh,2008). The United Nations Security Council had frozen assets belonging to extremist Iranian firms and issued travel bans on extremist individuals who are the main architects of the Ir
anian proliferation program. These sanctions have dealt the economy of the country a big blow because it has been squeezed to the edge due to the isolation of Mahmud Ahmedinejads regime from the rest of the world. Ahmedinejads regime is not the first Iranian regime to be sanctioned by the US and the UN. In the eighties, the Khomeinis regime was sanctioned by the US because of its radical and extremist stand on the Middle East peace deal. It will require more than the lifting of the ban to remedy the economic situation in Iran. One of the hardest hitting actions by Washington was the pressure that was put on foreign banks that deal with Iranian financial institutions. The banks were warned that their access to the US financial markets could be limited if they continued dealing with Iranian financial institutions. The USA had indentified a number of Iranian institutions to be affected by the sanctions due to their perceived closeness with the Ahmedinejads regime that is pursuing a nuclear program illegally. The Iranian nuclear industry has come under scrutiny especially because of the countries stance on terrorism and the best way of taming the Ahmedinejads regime was to starve the country economically using isolationist tendencies.