In confirmation of some earlyreportingwe featured at the start of this week,The Wall Street Journalhas verified something that Iraqi officials themselves were denying just days ago: theUS is blocking Iraq's regular dollar shipments in order to pressure it's Iran-backed militias.

"The Trump administration has suspended U.S. dollar shipments to Iraq and frozen security cooperation programs with its military, escalating the pressure on Baghdad to dismantle powerful Iranian-backed militias," said Iraqi and US officials interviewed inthe report.

Pallets of cash and the Middle East should ring familiar, stretching from the Bush-Cheney years to even the Obama years(and Iran sanctions relief as part of the original nuclear deal). In this case, like with the Obama/Iran deal saga before, this isactually Iraq's own oil revenue money.

In this latest case, a US military plane carrying a half-billion dollars has been delayed on its regularly scheduled delivery.

"A cargo-plane delivery of nearly $500 million in U.S. banknotes, the proceeds from Iraqi oil sales from Federal Reserve Bank of New York accounts,was blocked recently by Treasury Department officials because of U.S. concerns about the militias," WSJ continues, citing the officials.

The publication details, "It was the second scheduled shipment of dollars to the Central Bank of Iraq delayed by the U.S. since the start of the Iran war in late February, the U.S. and Iraqi officials said."

During the height of the March fighting between Iran and Israel,several American facilities across Iraq came under attack, even including the US Embassy in Baghdad's Green Zone. Typically these were drones, or rocket fire, and Erbil and northern Iraq in particular came under heavy fire.

To review from the backgrounder wepreviously featured: since 2003, adecisionissued by Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer has required that all Iraqi oil revenues bepaid into an account at the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York, giving the US the ability to control how many US dollars are returned to the CBI.

From that point until today, the Iraqi Ministry of Finance has had to submit funding requests to the US Treasury, which then approves or denies them based on its own criteria.

Thismonthly transfer of US dollars,flown into Baghdad in pallets of hard cash, determines Iraq's ability to pay for basic needs such as salaries, food, and medicine.

Source: ZeroHedge News