Free Market Sanctions
Nine months ago, we wrote about companies doing business in Iran and suggested that rather than worrying about UN sanctions or organized embargoes, the major countries of the Free World should simply make a pact not to do business with companies doing business with Iran. (JINSA Report #903)
Nine months ago, we wrote about companies doing business in Iran and suggested that rather than worrying about UN sanctions or organized embargoes, the major countries of the Free World should simply make a pact not to do business with companies doing business with Iran. (JINSA Report #903)
Nokia Siemens sold technology to Iran that enabled the regime to monitor nearly all forms of electronic communications between its citizens including voice, text and multimedia messaging as well as e-mail. There were six major oil refining companies providing gasoline to Iran: Swiss Vitol and Glencore, Swiss/Dutch Trafigura, French Total, British Petroleum and Indian Reliant. (Parenthetically, we wondered why the Obama Administration had signed a deal letting Vitol fill the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve). We asked, “What if they were given a choice, trade with Iran or trade with the G-7? (Forget Russia.) What if the G-7 simply said it would be government policy to weigh procurement choices against companies doing business with Iran?”
We were pleased to learn shortly thereafter that Los Angeles County decided not to award Siemens a contract for subway cars specifically because of its dealings with the Iranian government.
Since then, ENI, the Italian energy giant, announced that it was terminating its business in Iran and overall Italian cooperation with Iran has declined more than a third in the last year (although civilian trade remains legal for European companies). And five of the six largest petroleum refiners have ceased doing business in Iran, as has Royal Dutch Shell. Total, the French oil company, has said it would not invest in Iran but nothing about whether it was still trading there.
During the Cold War, the United States took the lead in establishing rules for technology security and dual-use trade with the Soviet Union. The Europeans complained mightily and desperately wanted to build the Yamal Pipeline that would have mortgaged the European energy future to Soviet natural gas. The United States withheld vital pipeline technology and the pipeline was halted, depriving the USSR of vital hard currency and hastening its demise. (It was revived after the collapse of the USSR, and now Russia holds Europe hostage periodically by halting natural gas shipments passing through Ukraine.) It was American leadership and the fact that companies had to choose between Soviet business and American business that made so many CEOs suddenly patriotic.
Iran is no different. It is in the interest of the West to deny Iran the capabilities that it wants to pursue its agenda, which is antithetical to ours.
Americans don’t need UN sanctions to get things done. We don’t need China and Russia to agree to anything. The AFL-CIO did not off-load Polish ships when Solidarity called strikes in communist Poland. It would have been legal, but it wouldn’t have been right. Wal-Mart and Kmart made Chinese companies feel the backlash of American consumers not buying Chinese goods after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The power of the American marketplace and those of our allies should be used to encourage companies to see their interests with ours and not with the dictators of Iran. With or without Russia. With or without China.