From Russia, With Fear

by Sara Nunnally Published on Monday, 02 April 2012, Inside Investing Daily

The BRICs are starting to show their power. As tensions with Iran rise, their economic fate is at risk.

When Russia’s worried, we all should be worried…   And when that worry concerns Iran and its nuclear program, it’s even scarier. Let me throw out a few words and phrases that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in an interview on Friday:

• Alarming
• Expanding
• Violation
• A new global economic crisis
• Strikes against Iran by… Israel
• An explosion of energy prices
• Escalation
• Worse than last year

Iran Feeling the Pressure

Economic sanctions are starting to have an effect on Iran. Reuters reports that the country has defaulted on its payments for rice to India.

Iranian buyers have defaulted on payments for about 200,000 tonnes of rice from their top supplier India, exporters and rice millers said on Tuesday, a sign of the mounting pressure on Tehran from a new wave of Western sanctions.

Now Iran can’t buy Indian rice on credit.