The erosion of sanctions against Iran over the past year and a half, which led to increased business ties with Western companies, has lessened the economic pressure on Iran to make a deal limiting its nuclear infrastructure, argued an editorial (Google link) published today in The Wall Street Journal. The Journal noted that increased commercial interest in Iran will also protect the Islamic republic from having sanctions “snapped back” if it is caught violating an emerging nuclear deal.
The limited sanctions relief granted by the November 2013 Joint Plan of Action allowed commercial interests to lay the groundwork for stepped-up business activity with Iran once sanctions are removed following a successful nuclear deal.
The latest evidence of growing business interest in the Islamic Republic came at this year’s World National Oil Companies Congress, held in London, where a full day of briefings on Monday was devoted to exploring energy-industry opportunities after sanctions vanish. Chevron, Siemens, Australia’s Woodside Energy and Singapore’s Yug-Neftegaz were among the industry players with delegates at the Iran briefings.
“We think that the enthusiasm is there,” Elham Hassanzadeh, the main workshop presenter, said in an interview with us. “And the fact that the whole sanctions structure is weakened is true, because everybody’s just ready that once it really crumbles to go back to the country and put down the money.” …
The Iranians and their Western business suitors have also developed a trade-promotion infrastructure. The British-Iranian Chamber of Commerce is headed by Lord Lamont of Lerwick, a Tory life peer and Chancellor in the John Major government who is an avid proponent of diplomatic rapprochement.
While President Barack Obama promised in April “that we are preserving the capacity to snap back sanctions in the event that they are breaking any deal,” the editorial suggests that the increased activity to foster commercial relations with Tehran shows that “[t]he business community is clearly betting otherwise.”
The effort to build business ties to Iran would complicate any effort to snap back sanctions, which was described by the Associated Press in April as “poorly defined” and could prove “unworkable.” Russia, one of the P5+1 nations involved in the nuclear talks with Iran, has said that it would reject any automatic “snap back” of sanctions. An agreement reached to restore sanctions would make Iran a partner in deciding whether or not Iran itself had violated an agreement.
[Photo: Ivar Husevåg Døskeland / Flickr ]