Report: Iran helping Syria to cope with sanctions

Feb 12, 2012, 12:21 GMT

Tel Aviv - Iran has been helping Syria to cope with the international sanctions imposed for its crackdown on protesters and rebels, an Israeli newspaper reported Sunday, citing documents they say were obtained by the hacker group Anonymous.

The daily Haaretz placed on its website a link to one of the original Arabic documents obtained by the hackers who broke into the email accounts of 78 employees of the Syrian president.

According to Haaretz, the documents show that Iran has given the Assad regime more than 1 billion US dollars to help it cope with the sanctions.

One of the hacked email accounts was that of Presidential Affairs Minister Mansour Azzam.

Haaretz quoted a December 8 memo signed by him, summing up a visit to Syria by an Iranian delegation, which announced it would buy basic supplies from Syria, including meat, poultry, olive oil and fruit, for 1 billion dollars.

The daily claimed it was unclear whether Iran actually needed these items or if this was meant to boost the Syrian economy.

Tehran also agreed to export fertilizer and raw materials to Syria for its petrochemical industry, it said.

The delegation also discussed ways for Syria to bypass the embargo on oil exports and promised to consider purchasing 150,000 barrels of oil from Syria per day for a year.

According to the document quoted by Haaretz, the two countries also discussed ways to bypass sanctions on flights and air cargo.

As for banking, they allegedly discussed transferring money between the two countries through Russia and China.

'Iran has promised to relay to Syria its know-how on ways of transferring funds from the country abroad and back, based on the experience Iran has accumulated in this field,' Haaretz quoted the memo as saying.

A December 14 letter, Haaretz said, states that 'the central banks of Syria and Iran agreed to use banks in Russia and China to ease the transfer of funds between the two countries, in view of the current conditions in Syria and Iran.'

Haaretz said the author repeatedly expressed Syria's wish to 'learn from the Iranian experience in this area (of sanctions).'

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