Lawmakers will crack down on business with Iran under the Trump administration, warning interested companies that they could wind up funding illicit Iranian activities and slapping sanctions on entities linked to Iran’s military, according to a leading House Republican.
That pledge comes amid efforts by the Obama administration to persuade companies to engage with Iran, including allowing foreign firms to do business with companies that are “controlled in whole or in part” or “minority owned” by sanctioned Iranian entities, such as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Florida congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Wednesday
“You can be sure that in the next Congress we will place an increasingly high importance on scrutinizing those that seek to do business with Iran,” Ros-Lehtinen said during an event hosted by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) and the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). “Our message is not going to be, ‘Iran is open for business.’ It’s going to be, ‘be careful if you do business with Iran.'”
Ros-Lehtinen said that Congress is also looking to squeeze the IRGC.
“We’re considering sanctions extensions on certain sectors of the Iranian economy,” she continued. “We want to see what we can do about broadening the scope of the sanctions to cover IRGC-controlled businesses … to include subsidiaries that are not wholly or majority-owned [by the IRGC] or those that have IRGC members on their boards.”
Critics have said that the IRGC, which has a pervasive presence in Iran’s economy, stands to benefit most from nuclear deal sanctions relief and incoming business. Administration officials have in turn said that a number of IRGC-controlled companies remain sanctioned.
Experts at the event called on the incoming administration to designate more IRGC-linked businesses.
“There are only 25 IRGC companies that have ever been designated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the Treasury, despite the fact that my organization has identified 575 IRGC companies that are eligible for designation,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Treasury should be right off the bat in February, once everybody’s in their seats, massively accelerating the number of IRGC designations, from 25 to 250 to 2500.”
Congress should urge the incoming administration to designate the IRGC for terrorism, he added. Currently only the IRGC’s overseas arm, the Quds force, is designated.
Dubowitz said that the designations would send a message to foreign companies looking to do business in Iran.
“You better be sure that your counter-party in that deal is not a Revolutionary Guard entity—and if they are, and we discover they are, then we will use the full force of U.S. financial sanctions as well as prosecutorial authority under [the Department of Justice] to go after companies doing business with what will be a terrorist organization.”
In recent months, the Obama administration has granted licenses to Boeing and the European manufacturer Airbus allowing for the sale of dozens of commercial planes to Iran Air, which was sanctioned in 2011 for ferrying weapons on behalf of the IRGC. Administration officials have resisted explaining why restrictions were dropped on the airline.
