On March 13, 2012, the Japanese government imposed sanctions against another Iranian bank, the 21st since last year.

It’s called Bank Tejarat, and is the third largest in Iran.  There’s just one problem, most of the deals involve Iranians buying Japanese products, not the other way round!

In 2011 Iranians bought U.S.$1.65 billion worth of Japanese industrial products. The majority of those transactions went through Bank Tejarat.  What this means is that in the name of trying to maintain good relations with the United States (after announcing $10 billion deal to dump U.S. bonds for Chinese) the leaders of Japan have possibly destroyed any chances of economic recovery.

As usual Japanese leaders are masters of understatement: “There may be a slight impact, but we believe that it is now most important to carry out international cooperation.”-Koichiro Gemba, Foreign Minister of Japan