Why Sanctions Against Iran Never Work
American companies and their subsidiaries outside of the USA have been making quite a good sum of money despite previous sanctions designed to hurt Iran. Try $107 billion in the last 10 years. This includes $15 billion to companies that are developing Iran's oil fields. More than two-thirds of the government money went to companies doing business in Iran’s energy industry. Oil and gas companies that have done business in Iran have over the years won lucrative drilling leases for close to 14 million acres of offshore and onshore federal land.
All total, 74 companies have business dealings with Iran, and 60 continue to do so despite any sanctions in place. The Iran Sanctions Act, created to punish foreign companies that invest more than $20 million in a given year to develop Iran’s oil and gas fields. But in the 14 years since the law was passed, the government has never enforced it and it has angered most European nations.
The problem is that the companies have many subsidiaries outside of the US. Recently, the US awarded Daelim a $111 million contract. The South Korean firm then signed a contract with Iran ($600 million) to develop the South Par gas field in Iran. Shell Oil in 1999, got a $800 million contract to develop two oil fields. Since then, Shell has been awarded $11 billion in US contracts in providing fuel to US troops. That is a sweet deal! Sanctions? Auto companies doing business in Iran, for instance, received $7.3 billion in federal contracts over the past 10 years. Among them was Mazda, whose cars in Iran are assembled by a company called the Bahman Group. The Bahman group is 45% owned by Sepah that provides funding to Iran Revolutionary Guards. Honeywell has received $13 billion since 2005. Most of this came from a British firm they bought that was expanding a gas refinery in Arak, Iran.
The major companies continuing doing business with Iran despite sanctions or a threat of sanctions are: Tyson Chicken, Shell Oil, Siemens, Sony, Alcatel (IT network) BASF, Mazda, Atlas-Copco, Bayer, Nissan, BP (British Petroleum which is developing oil fields there), Nokia, Canon, Fiat, Daelim, HP computers (stopped in 2009), Mercedes benz, ENI (which is developing one million acres for oil production).
The above is only the the tip of the iceberg. Now you know why Iran is laughing at any sanctions the UN will toss and any of Obama's threats are just meaningless to Ahmadinejad.
