The Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday exposed that a recent oil and gas fair held by Iran was attended by at least five companies that have U.S. government contracts, a development that Iran experts viewed with concern.

“It is a telling indication of the weakening of the international sanctions regime when firms with U.S. presence and U.S. government contracts openly publicize their attendance at an exhibition for Iran’s most heavily sanctioned sector,” said Matan Shamir, research director for the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which has been closely tracking and publicly admonishing those companies seeking to do business with Iran.

The Obama administration had last year blocked Congressional moves aimed at bolstering pressure and strengthening the hand of Western negotiators by insisting that so-called core sanctions were holding, and that U.S. diplomats had sufficient leverage to extract meaningful concessions from Iran. Skeptics had described the potential for a gold rush in Iran generally, and energy analyst Aaron Menenberg had last January outlined specific fears that a scramble for access to the Iranian energy market would trigger a downward spiral in which “no company wants to be the first one in, but none want to be the last.”

The Times of Oman had reported on the fair last week, noting that representatives from 600 companies had traveled to Iran “seeking to position themselves for a return to large-scale operations.” The event opened a few days before Iran’s oil minister declared that the Islamic republic would continue its efforts to bust through U.S. limits on energy exports, after already doing so for the last six months straight.

[Photo: PressTV News / YouTube]