Iran vs The Netherlands - Round 1

[Adrian II]

Mr Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, the Speaker of the Majlis (Iranian parliament) has called for a boycot of Dutch products. Earlier this year 215 Iranian MP's called for a 'revision of political and trade cooperation' with The Neds.

No, we're not the Rushdies of 2008. We have no Rushdie, only a peroxide blonde MP with an IQ equal to my shoe size who makes third rate home videos.

Aaanyways - maybe nothing will come of it, but it is a nice exercise. I have been looking into the numbers so as to figure out what a boycot would actually mean. I discovered one major thing: I don't know Jack Split about boycots and the way they work (and work out) in practice. So please help me out.

Here are some numbers, taken from our Trade Department website.

It appears that we import crude oil from Iran to the tune of about 1 billion euro and not much else. Iran in turn imports about 660 million euro worth of machinery, chemical products and farm animals from The Neds.

So who will be hurting who? And is the Speaker deliberately excluding exports to the Neds (i.e. crude oil, which we pay in dollars) from his statement?

Help me out, guys.