The US government has awarded more than US$107 billion in contract payments, grants and loans over the past decade to foreign and multinational US companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington’s efforts to discourage investment there, records show.
That includes nearly US$15 billion in benefits paid to companies that defied US sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.
For years, the US has been pressing other nations to join its efforts to squeeze the Iranian economy, in hopes of reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Now, with the nuclear standoff hardening and Iran rebuffing US diplomatic outreach, the Obama administration is trying to win a tough new round of UN sanctions.
But a New York Times analysis of federal records, company reports and other documents showed that both the Obama and Bush administrations have sent mixed messages to the corporate world when it comes to doing business in Iran, rewarding companies whose commercial interests conflict with US security goals.
Many of those companies are enmeshed in the most vital elements of Iran’s economy. 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, a primary focus of the Obama administration’s proposed sanctions because it oversees Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
Other companies are involved in auto manufacturing and distribution, another important sector of the Iranian economy with links to the Revolutionary Guards. One supplied container ship motors to IRISL, a government-owned shipping line that was subsequently blacklisted by the US for concealing arms shipments.
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