Curious Tehran Times Article on Sanctions

Tehran Times is running an article sourced to Fars News Agency which states that the International Monetary Fund announced last Saturday that despite global sanctions against Iran, the country's volume of imports has increased. I thought that such a report and findings would be pretty significant, so I searched on the IMF website to see if I could find the report. It wasn't there. I then contacted the Iran desk at the IMF and they replied that they did not know of the source that the article referred to. The latest document reporting the IMF's view on Iran's imports is the staff report for the 2006 Article IV consultation. Now I'm really curious what the source of the story is.

(UPDATE: Since posting this morning, my wonderful husband found two other publications that ran the IMF article, PressTV and Stockhouse (citing PressTV). It's kind of like the blogosphere...the more time you use the same information and cite someone else, the more likely it is to be accepted as credible.)

Here is the text of the Tehran Times article (in case the story is removed from the website):

"The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced on Saturday that despite the global sanctions against Iran, the country’s volume of imports has remarkably increased in 2007, Fars News Agency reported.

"Iran has imported over $40 billion worth of goods in last year, a real hike in comparison with less than $18 billion of 2002. Despite all the global pressures, the Iran’s volume of imports has doubled within the past 5 years, the report said.

"'China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), South Korea, Russia, India, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, and Britain were the main exporters to Iran in 2007,' IMF said adding, China’s exports to Iran exceeded those of all European countries. The Security Council on Friday began to consider tougher sanctions on Iran that were agreed to by six major powers, including a travel ban on officials involved in the country's nuclear and missile programs, a halt to trade in sensitive nuclear technology and 'vigilance' on transactions with two banks."