Malcolm Nance spent years moving money across the Middle East, and he says the entire economic war rests on a false assumption: that Iranians buy their goats with PayPal.
Meet hawala. You hand cash to a trusted man, he sends word, and the same sum is paid out in Tehran, Dushanbe, or Tashkent.
No wire. No ledger. Older than every bank in Manhattan.
"it never enters the Western system of banking"
He learned it the hard way in Iraq, when a million dollars in cash arrived at his NGO office in shopping bags, delivered by a stranger in a taxi, after his organization had handed the money to someone a country away.
In Najaf he watched money counters from families centuries into the trade count each stack twice by hand before insulting it with a machine.
Meanwhile Treasury explained why the hammer hasn't dropped: he doesn't want to blow up the global financial system.
Malcolm calls that the whole confession. A siege that spares dates, flour and kebab meat isn't a siege.
@MalcolmNance
