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US 20 dollar notes - Source: ONE News
The US government, while pushing for tougher sanctions against
Tehran, has given $153 billion in the last 10 years to US and
foreign companies doing business in Iran, much of it in the energy
sector, The New York Times reported.
Despite the threat of punishment for companies that seek US federal
contracts while dealing with Iran, the Times said successive
administrations have struggled to exert authority over foreign
companies and overseas units of US firms.
Of the 74 companies the newspaper said it had identified as doing
business with both the US government and Iran, 49 still work with
Iran and have no announced plans to leave.
"Many of those companies are enmeshed in the most vital elements of
Iran's economy," the Times said of its analysis of federal records,
company reports and other documents.
"More than two-thirds of the government money went to companies
doing business in Iran's energy industry - a huge source of revenue
for the Iranian government and a stronghold of the increasingly
powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which oversees
Tehran's nuclear and missile programs.
Companies the Times said had shared the $153 billion in US
contract payments, grants and other benefits between 2000 and 2009
while doing business in Iran, directly or through subsidiaries,
included:
Global energy giant Royal Dutch Shell
Brazilian state energy conglomerate Petrobras
US aviation and aerospace company Honeywell
Japanese carmaker Mazda
South Korean engineering group Daelim Industrial
The State Department had no immediate comment, spokesman Fred Lash
said.
Range of tools
The United States has joined Britain, France and Germany to push
for a fresh set of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program,
including restrictions on new Iranian banks abroad and vigilance
against Iran's central bank.
The UN Security Council has imposed three rounds of sanctions
against Iran for defying UN demands to stop nuclear enrichment.
Tehran rejects Western charges that its nuclear program is
designed to develop atomic weapons and says it will be used only to
generate electricity.
Russia and China, which both have veto power on the Security
Council, have lucrative trade ties to Tehran but Moscow has
signalled it could support new punitive steps against Iran as long
as they were not too severe.
China has not ruled out supporting new sanctions but has said
repeatedly the issue should be settled through dialogue.
The Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 gives the US president a range of
actions to use against companies but Congress is considering
tougher steps mandating that firms investing in Iran's energy
sector be denied federal contracts.
"We need to send a strong message to corporations that we're not
going to continue to allow them to economically enable the Iranian
government to continue to do what they have been doing,"
Representative Ron Klein, who wrote the contracting legislation,
told the Times.
The paper said the Obama administration points to decisions by a
number of companies to pull out of Iran or hold off on new
investment as a sign Washington has been successful at pressing
governments and executives to curtail investment in Iran.
"We are very aggressive, using a range of tools," Denis McDonough,
chief of staff to the National Security Council, told the
Times.
