US firms indirectly allowed to do business with Iran
The Obama administration has permitted U.S. firms to do business worth billions of dollars with Iran and other countries that have been officially blacklisted, a report said on Friday.
Some 10,000 deals have been allowed under a loophole that permits humanitarian aid despite the sanctions, allowing U.S. companies–including food giants Kraft and Mars — to get around economic blacklists for countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism, the New York Times said.
This year the international community and President Barack Obama’s administration especially has increased pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program, added even more Iranian individuals and firms to a long blacklist under an extended economic embargo.
Yet according to the Times report, through an office at the U.S. Treasury Department, licenses were granted via a 10-year-old law that means both agricultural and medical, humanitarian aid to be exempted.
The broadly-written language of the loophole, opened wider by industry lobby groups in recents, has seen "humanitarian aid" extended to companies exporting items as diverse as cigarettes, chewing gum, famous Louisiana hot sauce, and body-building supplements.
In a three-year investigation involving a Freedom of Information lawsuit, filed against the Treasury and its Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Times were given heavily redacted documents outlining the deals.
The office’s director Adam Szubin told the Times: "I haven’t seen any licenses that I thought we should have done differently."
Since the humanitarian aid law, the loophole that was passed in 2000, U.S. exports to Iran have totaled more than 1.7 billion dollars, according to the documents.
On the Wrigley’s chewing gum, owned by food giant Mars, a former sanctions advisor told the Times: "We debated that one for a month. Was it food? Did it have nutritional value? We concluded it did."
Hal Eren, who used to work at the Treasury licensing office, however admitted to the Times: "We were probably rolled on that issue by outside forces," apparently referring to industry lobby interests.
Other licenses were granted to blacklisted countries such as Cuba and Sudan.
Jolly Time popcorn, sold through the American Pop Corn Company to both Sudan and Iran, was likewise counted as humanitarian aid.