EU Firms Main Targets of US Sanctions on Iran
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| I guess there are good reasons these folks don't dislike Europeans as much. |
The last is very interesting: isn't it meant to reimpose US sanctions on Iran? For all intents and purposes, American firms still had significant reservations about doing business in Iran after that deal was struck. With the benefit of hindsight--Trump's election and all that--they were right not to seek much business there. However, the Europeans did not seem to have as many reservations. The end result is that, because American firms doing business with Iran were rather few, the real Western victims of this policy change are European firms. It works indirectly: the United States will apply sanctions against firms doing business with Iran like before, and European ones are hardly exempted:
The EU is scrambling to find ways to safeguard huge business deals with Iran, amid the threat of US penalties. Washington is re-imposing strict sanctions on Iran, which were lifted under the 2015 international deal to control the country's nuclear ambitions. On 8 May President Donald Trump denounced the deal, saying he would withdraw the US from it.Ie there anything the Europeans can do to insulate them from American sanctions on deal-doers with Iran? The bottom line is that all the other existing parties want to keep JCPOA intact, including the Europeans. However, the mechanisms which they can use to evade US overreach are iffy:
Since the deal took effect in 2016 major European firms have rushed to do billions of dollars' worth of business with Iran, and now thousands of jobs are at stake. Many of those firms fear their business ties with the US could be at risk if they continue to do deals with Iran past a November deadline.
There is an existing EU "blocking statute", from 1996, aimed at countering US sanctions linked to communist Cuba. Now EU officials say they are revamping the statute to avoid the latest US restrictions on firms doing business with Iran.Well, good luck with that. Speaking of which, here's a list of European deals now at risk:
But there are doubts about the statute's legal power. Reuters news agency says Shell and some other European firms with big operations in the US prefer to push for US waivers on a case-by-case basis. US authorities have imposed hefty fines on banks for processing Iranian transactions, including UK-based Standard Chartered, HSBC and Lloyds. France, Germany and the UK all say they remain committed to the nuclear deal with Iran and to expanding business ties, provided Iran sticks to its commitments.
- Total (French) signed a deal worth up to $5bn to help Iran develop the world's largest gas field, South Pars
- Norway's Saga Energy signed a $3bn deal to build solar power plants
- Airbus clinched a deal to sell 100 jets to IranAir
- European turboprop maker ATR (an Airbus-Leonardo partnership) agreed to sell 20 planes to Iran
- Germany's Siemens signed contracts to upgrade Iran's railways and re-equip 50 locomotives
- Italy's state rail firm FS signed a $1.4bn deal to build a high-speed railway between Qom and Arak
- France's Renault signed a joint venture deal, including an engineering centre and a production plant, to boost Renault's production capacity in Iran to 350,000 vehicles a year
