Reza Zarrab: The man who sets palaces aquiver

They are in a worse state than the man who sings at the top of his voice to quell his fear while passing a cemetery at midnight.
On top of this, they are all at odds with one another.
One – Who cares, anyway? What’s Zarrab to us? He got mixed up in dirty commercial business and the US is holding him to account. That’s all.
Another – We should have woken up at the beginning. We should have nabbed him before the guy went to America. He went there to squeal. He’ll squeal and we’ll cop it.
Yet another – We have an energy deficit. If we hadn’t circumvented that Iran embargo, we’d have been left without energy. The people would have been shivering from the cold in the middle of winter.
One more – Zarrab is an excuse. America is gunning for our venerable leader, our Chief. This trial amounts to the 17/25 December plot transplanted to America.
An official – The issue is not busting the embargo and what have you. It is to wear down our President and take the wind out of his sails. This is not a legal trial but a political trial, that’s all there is to it.
I could go on further. I could fill not one, but several Claw Mark columns with this drivel. But, let’s make do with this.
If you are curious for more and can stomach it, take a tour round the scribes and keyboard warriors who have columns in the AKP media.
You will see that Zarrab has the palace aquiver. With the palace quivering, the AKP media is all aquiver.
 
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Yes, it is true. The Zarrab trial that is setting the palace aquiver is not in essence a legal trial. It is a trial that has a strong political side and that will produce political consequences.
It will have political consequences, because Reza Zarrab got up to his neck in dirty monetary relations; he transferred proceeds emanating from the Republic of Turkey State’s financial resources by illicit means to Teheran to pay for energy purchased from Iran; in the process, he both filled his own coffers a fair bit and did some “nice turns” for influential politicians that did not just involve “watches”.
Then what?
Next, the politicians in top state office blatantly prevented this from making its way to the judiciary.
Prosecutors turned a blind eye and both the young fellow by the name of Reza Zarrab, and the managers of public banks who collaborated with him, as well as those who “see to state business while seeing no evil” forming part of the A team of politics were whitewashed without undergoing any kind of prosecution and continued their lives as respected citizens.
To put it more correctly, they “wished to continue.”
But the US administration, having the relations and technical means to be as capable as them of closely following, knowing about and documenting what was going on, geared itself up to hit more than one bird with one stone. They initiated the process whereby they would bring Reza Zarrab, followed by Halk Bank’s deputy CEO, to America (however they managed to), detain them and plonk them in front of a jury, both to punish the crime of sanctions busting and to bring people who were getting too big for their boots politically down to size.
So, the Turkish judiciary did not call to account over the shoe boxes and the bars of gold that appeared to have gone to the Gulf emirates and took a circuitous route to Teheran, but the US judiciary, conversely, has begun to do so.
This has to be the best shot at a summary of what happened.
Well, it is all but certain that this dirty washing – the whole caboodle - will come out into the open. The 27 November hearing has been adjourned until 4 December. Questions as to whether Zarrab has turned outright informer and will sing the names one by one of his partners in crime, or has struck a plea deal, are now mere details.
Those who covered up the 17/25 December process have sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind.
In the whirlwind, it is not only the trees that quiver, but palaces, too.
This is all from Claw Mark for today (and just for today).