Companies Profiting from U.S. Contracts Also Doing Business with Iran

The U.S. has given foreign and multinational American countries doing business with Iran more than $107 billion in contracts, grants and other benefits even as it has pressed other nations not to do business with that country in the effort to discourage it from developing nuclear weapons, the New York Times reports.


The Times says that many of the companies which are benefitting from federal spending are deeply involved in areas of the Iranian economy most important to the regime, such as its energy industry which is a huge source of revenues for the government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Times identified 74 companies that had done business with both the U.S. and Iran and said 49 continue to do so with no plans to stop.

American companies are prohibited from engaging in most types of trade with Iran under an embargo that was put in place in the 1990s.

Another tool for discouraging trade with Iran for companies not subject to the U.S. embargo is the Iran Sanctions Act which was aimed at foreign companies making major investments in the Iranian oil and gas industry. But the Times says that the U.S. has never enforced it because, in part, it did not want to anger its allies who complained it was an improper attempt to apply American law in other countries.