U.S. Nonprofit ‘Names and Shames’ Businesses to Put Bite Into Iran Sanctions
U.S. Nonprofit ‘Names and Shames’ Businesses to Put Bite Into Iran Sanctions - Open Channel
Perched high above midtown Manhattan, behind security-locked doors in an unmarked office, a half-dozen 20-somethings sit at computers, looking for ways to inflict hardship on the Iranian government and the people it rules. The “war room,” as its occupants call it, is a mere 20 blocks from Iran’s Mission to the United Nations and even closer to the hotel where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stays during his visits to New York.
But this is not a U.S. government intelligence facility brimming with incoming feeds of classified data. The offices belong to the private nonprofit group United Against Nuclear Iran, and the computers contain a wealth of (mostly) open source economic data culled from Iranian and other sources.
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UANI, as it calls itself, has one mission: to wage “economic warfare against the Islamic Republic of Iran …The regime must be forced to choose between having a nuclear weapon or a functioning economy.”
That’s not to say the group doesn’t have roots in government. It is headed by Mark Wallace, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and former heads of the CIA, the counterterrorism office of the National Security Council and the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, sit on its advisory board.