March 5 2020, 8:30 p.m.
DESPITE A MASSIVE coronavirus-related public health crisis, an
anti-Iran pressure group with close ties to the Trump administration is urging
major pharmaceutical companies to “end their Iran business,” focusing on
companies with special licenses — most often under a broadly defined “humanitarian exemption” — to conduct trade with Iran.
With a novel strain of
coronavirus rapidly spreading around the world, Iran has been hit particularly
hard, with 107 deaths and 3,515 infections recorded so far. Yet the pressure
group, United Against Nuclear Iran, is carrying on with its campaign targeting medical
trade with Iran despite the Trump administration’s special financial channels for humanitarian goods and medicine to reach the
beleaguered country.
“U.S. sanctions have had a
long-term impact on Iran’s ability to freely import medical supplies,” said
Tyler Cullis, an attorney specializing in sanctions law at Ferrari &
Associates. He pointed to “outside groups” that seek to bolster the Treasury
Department’s investigatory heft and provide information on companies doing
trade with Iran. “In tandem with U.S. sanctions,” Cullis said, “these groups have
sought to impose reputational costs on companies that engage in lawful and
legitimate trade with Iran, including humanitarian trade.”
“These groups have sought to
impose reputational costs on companies that engage in lawful and legitimate
trade with Iran, including humanitarian trade.”
The medical and humanitarian
trade are carved out of crippling sanctions against Iran through special
licenses issued by the Treasury Department. But companies must apply for the
licenses then carry out the trade — something United Against Nuclear Iran,
known as UANI, seeks to discourage.
“Their efforts are not
insignificant,” Cullis said. “It is, after all, not an altogether lucrative
enterprise selling medical supplies to Iran, so the name-and-shame operations
of outside groups have a significant impact on the cost-benefit analysis
associated with doing business with Iran.”
Joshua Silberberg, a
spokesperson for UANI, declined to respond to questions about the group’s
effort to name and shame companies doing medical trade with Iran. “UANI has a
long history of expressing support and solidarity with the Iranian people,” he
said, pointing to a statement applauding the finalization of the Swiss
Humanitarian Trade Arrangement, an agreement arranged by the U.S. and Swiss
governments.
UANI says it aims to
persuade “the regime in Tehran to desist from its quest for nuclear weapons,
while striving not to punish the Iranian people.” (The U.S. intelligence
community does not believe that Iran has any desire or plans to build
nuclear weapons.) UANI’s efforts, however, have extended beyond sanctions into
pressuring companies that do legal trade with Iran, often under the Treasury
Department’s humanitarian exemptions to sanctions — including medical-related
trades that would presumably aid in combating a massive public health crisis
like this coronavirus outbreak.
UANI operates an “Iran Business Registry” that provides an online database of companies it believes
are conducting business in or with Iran — a name-and-shame strategy to increase
Iran’s economic isolation. The pressure campaign has targeted multiple medical
companies with Treasury Department licenses to conduct trade with Iran. Nine
pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical-device corporations, all with
special licenses, are listed on UANI’s business registry. Companies urged by
UANI to “end their Iran business” include Bayer, Merck, Pfizer, Genzyme, AirSep, Medrad, Becton, Dickinson & Company, Eli Lilly, and Abbott Laboratories.
The legal channels for
humanitarian trade are widely reported to be failing to provide a sufficient flow of
medicine and other humanitarian goods.
UANI’S EFFORTS ARE particularly notable in light of the group’s
close ties to the Trump administration; Iran’s regional adversaries Saudi Arabia,
the United Arab Emirates, and Israel; and the Republican Party’s biggest
donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.
Senior UANI adviser John Bolton worked for UANI both before and after his stint
in the Trump administration as national security adviser. UANI’s umbrella
group, Counter Extremism Project United Inc, paid Bolton $240,000 between 2016 and 2017. Bolton’s appointment as
national security adviser was quickly followed by Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with
Iran.
Besides Bolton, the Trump
administration twice sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to UANI’s annual
conference, held during the United Nations General Assembly. Pompeo used the
occasions to promote outlandish claims about Europe purportedly financing Iranian
terrorism and to present the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy to
UANI’s audience, which included senior diplomats and intelligence officials
from the Persian Gulf and Israel.
The group’s last summit,
held in September, featured U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who is
now Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, as well as a who’s who of
the Trump administration’s hawkish Middle East partners, including top diplomats
from Persian Gulf monarchies and Israel. (UANI and its affiliated organizations
have a number of links to Gulf monarchies, including a 2014 email from a UANI
advisory board member soliciting “support” from the United Arab Emirates.)
UANI’s top funder, billionaire Thomas Kaplan — an investor whose companies have looked to
profit from “political unrest” in the Middle East — was also in attendance at the
summit.
Finally, Sheldon and Miriam
Adelson’s financial support for UANI closely tracks the Republican
megadonors’ hawkish views toward Iran. In 2013, Sheldon Adelson told an audience at Yeshiva University that Obama should launch a nuclear strike on Iran and threaten that Iran
will be “wiped out” if it doesn’t dismantle its nuclear program. The Adelsons
were Trump’s biggest funders in the 2016 election and the GOP’s biggest funders
in the 2018 cycle. They are expected to contribute at least $100 million to Trump’s
reelection efforts and Republican congressional candidates in the 2020 cycle.
While the Trump
administration’s extreme financial pressure against Iran is coinciding with the
coronavirus outbreak, Tyler Cullis, the sanctions lawyer, was careful to note
that issues with ensuring a robust trade of medical and humanitarian supplies
to Iran began under previous administrations. “While those problems have been
exacerbated under the Trump administration,” Cullis said, “their origination
takes place more than a decade ago when prior administrations first started
imposing enormous sanctions pressure on Iran’s financial sector.”
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