Iran could turn to cryptocurrencies to evade some sanctions

TEHRAN (defapress) – Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran's Passive Defense Organization, has said “cryptocurrencies are untraceable in the financial and monetary system of each country, but internationally they can provide us with great opportunities.”

News ID: 73360

Date: 29 October 2018 - 11:57

He told the state Channel 2 News on Monday that passive defense is “deceptively simple”, since we are always faced with threats in our lives and they have many complexities.

“Threats are divided into two categories: natural and man-made or technological threats; natural threats result from nature and there is no hostility in it, they are stable such as earthquake and flood. But man-made or technological threats are dynamic and they are different at any given time,” he noted.

Jalali added that cryptocurrencies are considered as a double-edged sword since they are untraceable in the financial and monetary system of each country, but internationally they can provide us with great opportunities.

“Cryptocurrencies can help bypass certain sanctions through untraceable banking operations,” Jalali said, stressing the need for formation of a national cryptocurrency in the country in order to use it whenever necessary.

Pointing to the swift, he said “our major problem here is the US dollar, because the United States uses its national currency to control any country's SWIFT operations, so we should reduce dependence on the dollar and replace it with another currency.”

After President Rouhani’s phone was recently wiretapped, we decided to create a anti tapping phones using existing ones for the officials, but this is still underway, he noted.

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