Political Public Opinion: Washington- Guilty Of Corruption In Giving Contracts To American Companies Doing Business With Iran

by

William McCullough

” All institutions are prone to corruption and the vices of their members.”

Morris West 

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington’s efforts to discourage investment there, records show. That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.

For years, the United States has been pressing other nations to join its efforts to squeeze the Iranian economy, in hopes of reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Now, with the nuclear standoff hardening and Iran rebuffing American diplomatic outreach, the Obama administration is trying to win a tough new round of United Nations sanctions.

But a New York Times analysis of federal records, company reports and other documents shows that both the Obama and Bush administrations have sent mixed messages to the corporate world when it comes to doing business in Iran, rewarding companies whose commercial interests conflict with American security goals.

Many of those companies are enmeshed in the most vital elements of Iran’s economy. More than two-thirds of the government money went to companies doing business in Iran’s energy industry — a huge source of revenue for the Iranian government and a stronghold of the increasingly powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a primary focus of the Obama administration’s proposed sanctions because it oversees Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/world/middleeast/07sanctions.html?hp

So….we are supposed to respond to hysteria over Iran, when Washington is complicit in giving contracts to those U.S. companies and subsidiaries contributing to Iran’s growing militancy? In that Obama’s trying to delegate his failed negotiations with Iran to the UN, might he be buying time for those companies to gain as much profit in their dealings with Iran for as long as possible?  Now we might, I think, safely assume that this may be part of the reason that the past and present administrations did not want Israel to bomb the Iranian nuclear program out of existence.

It’s no secret that lobbyists for these companies bribe the Congress and anyone who has influence to effect these various federal contracts. With that being said are we, not if– but when Iran makes it’s move to dominate the middle east, supposed to support our troops being put in place to be killed because corrupt companies and their Congressional lackeys have sold us out? There is no patriotism at risk in opposing any U.S. military intervention in Iran when Washington is selling us out by not stopping the greed and corruption in it’s own house.  Just my opinion.