Capitol flees Iran

Washington Times:

Threats of an international financial squeeze stemming from the showdown over Iran's nuclear program have sent Iranians scrambling to get their savings out of the country, or if that won't work, to convert them into gold.
An estimated $200 billion has left the country since last year's election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, accompanied by panic buying of gold. The Iranian stock exchange lost an estimated 20 percent of its value even as other bourses in the region rose.
"The most tangible effect of the threat of sanctions in the private sector is downsizing," said Farhad Sanadizadeh, a Tehran-based oil and gas consultant who has let 40 employees go in the past six months. "A lot of companies are not hiring new people and reducing their work force."
Last week, it was disclosed that most European banks are no longer facilitating money transfers from Iranian banks. Iran has already removed most of its capital from European banks, according to press reports, fearing a possible assets freeze.

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Iran's high inflation, estimated at 12 percent, coupled with the effect of sanctions fever has made cooking oil and wheat more expensive since the Persian New Year on March 21.
Hossein Mohammadi, a 24-year old refugee from Afghanistan, cleans houses in the Iranian capital for a living after leaving his war-ravaged homeland for the stability of its western neighbor.
These days, walking through the late afternoon crowds of families and young people flocking onto the tree-covered boulevards of north Tehran, he worries increasingly about sanctions being imposed on his adopted homeland.
"The lady I work for has already sold her Peugeot 206 [an expensive, French car assembled in Iran] because she says that if there was an economic embargo, gasoline and spare parts will become so expensive that it'll just sit in the garage and rust," he said.

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"Stage by stage [the sanctions process] is starting, and it's all the fault of Ahmadinejad for insisting on us having a nuclear program," said Hamid Abedi, a 45-year-old furniture repairman who supplements his income by driving around in search of fares in the evenings.
"What's the point of us having nuclear energy if we're deprived of everything else?"

For Mahmoud Ahmadinejad no price that others pay is too high. He is on a mission from God, but he is far mor dangerous than Jake and Elmo in the Blues Brothers who made the statment famous.