Over three years ago, in August 2012, we described how while US regulators and authorities were cracking down on such "illegal" banks as Standard Chartered and HSBC, they were allowing the non-corporate shielded entities, the actual individuals who benefited from the bank crimes, slip through the cracks simply by allowing them to park billions of ill-gotten gains in US real estate:
With just hours to go before Obama's last State of the Union address, the US president suffered his latest foreign policy fiasco when around noon local time, Iran arrested 10 US sailors in a boat that has allegedly entered deep into Iranian territorial waters.
Dan Drezner’s reviews the story of Iran’s brief detention of 10 U.S. sailors after they had accidentally drifted into Iranian waters, and here’s what he finds:
So, to sum up: Compared to a similar incident in 2007, this was handled much more quickly and with a minimum of fuss. It’s almost as if U.S. diplomacy toward Iran has yielded some benefits or something.
The ten US sailors who were captured by Revolutionary Guards after entering Iranian waters have been released. The US military confirmed the sailors’ release after the Guards issued a statement claiming they were freed into international waters after an apology from Washington.
On Tuesday evening, just prior to President Obama’s last State of the Union address, a geopolitical black swan landed on Farsi Island.
Ten US sailors and two US Navy boats were seized by Iran when they purportedly entered Iranian waters “illegally.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse.