US business transactions with Iran are near zero, so the only route available to legislators who want to show disdain for the Islamic Republic is to put more restrictions on foreign companies that do business with Iran.
The new bill’s tactic is to require that any business traded on a US stock exchange must reveal its investments in the Islamic Republic.
“If we can bring greater transparency to any investment being made in Iran, we can defund the nuclear militarization of one of the world’s most hostile nations,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who is one of the sponsors of the bill.
“Companies must make a choice: do business with Iran, or have access to the US economy…. We have to have a zero tolerance policy for any company that puts profit ahead of our safety or the safety of our allies.”
The legislation was co-sponsored in the Senate by Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. In the House of Representatives, the sponsors are Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat, and Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana.
The lawmakers said the bill would require companies to disclose any sanctionable investments in Iran in their quarterly and annual reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and require US banks to report activities in Iran by their foreign correspondent banks.
The goal appears to be to embarrass these companies by exposing their operations in Iran in hopes that will prompt them to break off their business with the Islamic Republic.
But most if not all such firms have already been named in numerous documents published in recent years.
Most major European companies have phased out business ties with Iran, judging that their sales in the United States are far larger and more important than business in Iran. But a recent German study shows that small and medium-sized German businesses—ones that do little or no business in the United States—are trying to fill the gap that opened when the nig name firms fled Iran.
The lawmakers cited a recent report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that indicated eight global firms that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq have links to Iran’s energy program: Alcatel-Lucent of France, China National Offshore Oil Company, China National Petroleum Company, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, Japan’s Mitsubishi and Mitsui, Anglo-Dutch firm Royal Dutch Shell, and Sasol of South Africa.
The think tank also said 18 banks conduct business with Iran through foreign correspondent banking relationships, including large US banks and financial firms from Japan, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France and India.
